a 
nS 
4 


/) 
+ad 
i 
we 


Birla ba 
AN 


um 


9 


vis, 


UTS 


Si 


2 * ee so C 
rere Pa ee we 


sr 


SS 


| SARS 
aS Sa an Se 
ors 


ha Oe 


he 


eee 


eee 


LIB Ak ¥ 


OF THE 


| 


chee Ow DTC 1 OE a Tey oe 
i PRINCETON, N. J. ii . 


Case 4 7 
Shelf | Wary | | 
Book: : 


THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES, 


VOLUME XVI. 


THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. 


Works already Published, 


FORMS OF WATER, 1n Ctoups, Ratn, Rivers, ICE, AND GLACIERS. 
By Prof. JoHn TYNDALL, LL; Bes S. xvol. Cloth. Price, $1.5c. 


PHYSICS AND POLITICS; or, THOUGHTS ON THE APPLICATION OF 
THE PRINCIPLES OF *‘ NATURAL SELECTION”? AND ‘‘ INHERITANCE”’ TO 
PouiticaAL Society. By WALTER BaGEnHoT, Esq., author of ‘* The 
English Constitution.” vol. Cloth. Price, $x. 50. 


FOODS. By Epwarp Smiru, M. D., LL. B., F. R.S. x vol. Cloth. 
Price, $1.75. 


MIND AND BODY: THE THEORIES OF THEIR RELATIONS. By ALEx. 
Bain, LL. D., Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen. 1 vol., 
remo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 


THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. By HERBERT SPENCER. Price, $1.50. 
THE NEW CHEMISTRY. By Prof. Jostau P. Cooke, Jr., of Harvard 


University. 1vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00. 


THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. By Prof. BALrour STEWART, 
DL De Pas. a1vol412me. sCloth. @rrice;.pi.50. 


ANIMAL LOCOMOTION; or, WaALxkinc, SWIMMING, AND FLYING, 
WITH A DISSERTATION ON ArRONAUTICS. By J. BELL PETTIGREW, 
M. D., F.R. S. E., F.R. C. PE. x vol., r2mo. Fully illustrated. 
Price, $1.75. 


RESPONSIBILITY IN MENTAL DISEASE. By Iienry Maups- 
LEY, M. D. 1x vol.,12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 


THE SCIENCE OF LAW. By Prof. SHetpon Amos. 1 vol., 12mo. 
Cloth. Price, $1.75. 


ANIMAL MECHANISM. A TREATISE ON TERRESTRIAL AND AERIAL 
Locomotion. By E. J. Marry. With 117 Illustrations. Price, $1.75. 


THE HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION 
AND SCIENCE. By JoHn Wm. Drarer, M. D., LL..D., author of 
‘The Intellectual Development of Europe.”’ Price, $1.75. 


THE. DOCTRINE OF DESCENT, AND DARWINISM. By Prof. 
Oscar ScHMIDT, Strasburg University. Price, $1.50. 


THE CHEMISTRY, OF LIGHT AND PHOTOGRAPHY. In its 
APPLICATION TO ART, SCIENCE, AND InpustRY. By Dr. HERMANN 
VOGEL. too Illustrations. Price, $2.00, 


FUNGI; THEIR Nature, INFLUENCE, AND Uses. By M. C. Cooxn, 
M. A., LL.D. Edited by Rev. M. J. BerKEtey, M. A., F.L.S. With 
109 Illustrations. Price, $1.50. 


THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. By Prof. W. D. 
Wuitney, of Yale College. Price, $1.50. 


THE NATURE OF LIGHT, wiry a GENERAL AccounT oF PHYSICAL 
Optics. By Dr. EuGENE LommeEL, Professor of Physics in the Univer- 
sity of Erlangen. With 188 Illustrations and a Plate of Spectra in 
Chromo-lithography. (/z press.) 


LANGUAGE: 


AN OUTLINE OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE. 


BY 


WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY, 


PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN YALE COLLEGE. 


Bre Br a NE We YORK: . 
=D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
549 & 551 BROADWAY. 


ule repens OF 


_ Enyrenen, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, — 


In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 


x 


eee Ha tee ke, CH. 


Tue present work needs only a few words by way 
of introduction. That its subject calls for treatment in 
the series of which it forms a part, especially at this 
time, when men’s crude and inconsistent views of lan- 
guage are tending to crystallize into shape, no labored 
argument is required to prove. Very discordant opin- 
ions as to the basis and superstructure of linguistic 
philosophy are vying for the favor, not of the public 
only, but even of scholars, already deeply versed in the 
facts of language-history, but uncertain and compara- 
_ tively careless of how these shall be cobrdinated and 
explained. Physical science on the one side, and psy- 
chology on the other, are striving to take possession of 
linguistic science, which in truth belongs to neither. 
The doctrines taught in this volume are of the class of 
those which have long been widely prevalent among 
students of man and his institutions; and they only 
need to be exhibited as amended and supported, not 
crowded out or overthrown, by the abundant new 
knowledge which the century has yielded, in order to 


vi PREFACE. 


win an acceptance wellnigh universal. They who hold 
them have been too much overborne hitherto by the ill- 
founded claims of men who arrogate a special scientific 
or philosophic profundity. 

After one has once gone over such a subject upon a 
carefully matured and systematic plan, as I did in my 
“Language and the Study of Language” (New York 
and London, 1867), it is not possible, when treating -it 
again for the same public, to avoid following in the 
main the same course; and readers of the former work 
will not fail to observe many parallelisms between the 
two. Even a part of the illustrations formerly used 
have been turned again to account; for, if it: be made 
a principle to draw the chief exemplifications of the 
life and growth of language from our own tongue, 
there are certain matters—especially our most impor- 
tant recent formative endings and auxiliaries—which 
must be taken, because they are most available for the 
needed purpose. Nor has the basis of linguistic facts 
and their classification undergone during the past eight 
years such change or extension as should show conspicu- 
ously in so compendious a discussion as this. Accord- 
ingly, I present here an outline of linguistic science 
agreeing in many of its principal features with the 
former one; the old story told in a new way, under 
changed aspects and with changed proportions, and 
with considerably less fullness of exposition and illus- 
tration. 


The limits imposed on the volume by the plan of 


PREFACE. Vil 


the series have compelled me to abbreviate certain 
parts to which some will perhaps agree with me in 
wishing that more extension could have been given. 
Thus, it had been my intention to include in the last 
chapter a fuller sketch of the history of knowledge and 
opinion in this department of study. And I have had 
to leave the text almost wholly without references: 
although I may here again allege the compendious cast 
of the work, which renders them little called for; I 
trust that no injustice will be found to have been done 
to any. The foundation of my discussion is the now 
generally accessible facts of language, which are no one 
man’s property more than another’s. As for views 
opposed to my own; while often having them distinctly 
in mind in their shape as presented by particular schol- 
ars, I have hardly ever thought it necessary to report 
them formally; and I have on principle avoided any- 
thing bearing the aspect of personal controversy. 


New Haven, April, 1875. 


COUN? TL Wane ss 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I.—Intropuctory: THE PROBLEMS OF THE ScrENCE OF Lan- 
GUAGE . : 4 : 4 ; 3 : ‘ . 1 
Il.—How racu Inpivipuat acquires HIS LanauaGe: Lire or 
LANGUAGE 3 : : ; , : : 7 
IJI.—Tuer ConservaTIVE AND ALTERATIVE Forces IN LANGUAGE. 32 
IV.—GrowtH oF LANGUAGE: CHANGE IN THE OvuTER Form or 
Worps. . : ‘ ; ; ‘ ‘ é 45 
V.—GrowtH or LancuaGe: CHANGE IN THE INNER CONTENT 
oF Worps . ; $ : : ‘ ; ; 2B 
VI.—GrowrtnH or Lanauace: Loss or Worps anp Forms . 98 
VII.—Growrn or Languace: Propuction or NEw Worps AND 
Forms < ; : : : x , eit? LOG 
VIII.—SumMary: THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS . : : ‘ 134 
IX.—LocaLt anp Ciass VARIATION or LanauaGE: DiaLtects . 153 
X.—Inpo-EvuropeaNn LANGUAGE . ‘ : ? Y : 179 
XJ.—Lineuistic Structure: MarerraL anp Form In Lan- 
GUAGE. F : : Se: : z woreda 
XJI.—Orner Fairies or LANGuAGE: THEIR LocaLity, AGE, 
AND STRUCTURE . ; : : A : ; “ 228 
XT.—Laneauace anp EruHno.tocy ; , é ; : « 265 
XIV.—NATURE AND ORIGIN oF LANGUAGE ; : : - 278 


XV.—TuHE ScIENCE oF LANGUAGE: CONCLUSION . ‘ . er old 


CHAPTER I. 


INTRODUCTORY : THE PROBLEMS OF THE SCIENCE OF LAN- 
GUAGE. 


Definition of language. Man its universal and sole possessor. Variety 
of languages. The study of language; aim of this volume. 


_ Lanevacr may be briefly and comprehensively de- 
fined as the means of expression of human thought. 

In a wider and freer sense, everything that bodies 
forth thought and makes it apprehensible, in whatever 
way, is called language; and we say, properly enough, 
that the men of the Middle Ages, for example, speak 
to us by the great architectural works which they have 
left behind them, and which tell us very plainly of 
their genius, their piety, and their valor. But for 
scientific purposes the term needs restriction, since it 
would apply else to nearly all human action and prod- 
uct, which discloses the thought that gives it birth. 
Language, then, signifies rather certain instrumentali- 
ties whereby men consciously and with intention rep- 
resent their thought, to the end, chiefly, of making it 
known to other men: it is expression for the sake of 
communication. 

The instrumentalities capable of being used for this 
purpose, and actually more or less used, are various: 
gesture and grimace, pictorial or written signs, and 


9 INTRODUCTORY. 


uttered or spoken signs: the first two addressed to the 
eye, the last to the ear. The first is chiefly employed 
by mutes—though not in its purjty, inasmuch as these 
unfortunates are wont to be trained and taught by 
those who speak, and their visible signs are more or 
less governed by habits born of utterance; going even 
so far as slavishly to represent the sounds of speech. 
The second, though in its inception a free and indepen- 
dent means of expression, yet in its historical develop- 
ment becomes linked as a subordinate to speech, and 
even finds in that subordination its highest perfection 
and greatest usefulness." The third is, as things actu- 
ally are in the world, infinitely the most important; in- 
somuch that, in ordinary use, “language” means utter- 
ance, and utterance only. And so we shall understand 
it here: language, for the purposes of this discussion, 
is the body of uttered and audible signs by which in 
human society thought is principally expressed, gesture 
and writing being its subordinates and auxiliaries.’ 

Of such spoken and audible means of expression 
no human community is found destitute. From the 
highest races to the lowest, all men speak; all are able 
to interchange such thoughts as they have. Language, 
then, appears clearly ‘ natural” to man; such are his 
endowments, such his circumstances, such his history 
one or all of these—that it is his invariable possession. 

Moreover, man is the sole possessor of language. 
It is true that a certain degree of power of communi- 
cation, sufficient for the infinitely restricted needs of 
their gregarious intercourse, is exhibited also by some 


‘See the author’s “ Language and the Study of Language,” p. 448 
seg. ; and his “ Oriental and Linguistic Studies,” ii. 198-196. 

? Their natural and historical relations will be further treated of in 
chapter xiv. * 


DIVERSITY OF HUMAN LANGUAGE. 3 


of the lower animals. Thus, the dog’s bark and howl 
signify. by their difference, and each by its various style 
and tone, very different things; the domestic fowl has 
a song of quiet enjoyment of life, a clutter of excite- 
ment and alarm, a cluck of maternal anticipation or 
care, a cry of warning—and so on. But these are not 
only greatly inferior in their degree to human lan- 
guage ; they are also so radically diverse in kind from 
it, that the same name cannot justly be applied to both. 
Language is one of the most marked and conspicuous, 
as well as fundamentally characteristic, of the faculties 
of man. 

Nevertheless, while human language is thus one as 
contrasted with brute expression, it is in itself of a 
variety which is fairly to be termed discordance. It is 
a congeries of individual languages, separate bodies of 
audible signs for thought, which, reckoning even those 
alone of which the speakers are absolutely unintelli- 
gible to one another, are very numerous. These lan- 
guages differ among themselves in every degree. Some 
are so much alike that their users can with sufficient 
trouble and care come to understand one another ; of 
others, even a superficial examination shows abundant 
correspondences; of yet others, similar points of ac- 
cordance are rarer, and only discoverable by practised 
study and research ; and a great. number are to all ap- 
pearance wholly diverse—and often, not only diverse 
in respect to the actual signs which they use for their 
various conceptions, but also as to their whole struct- 
ure, the relations which they signify, the parts of 
speech they recognize. And this diversity does not 
aczord with differences of intellectual capacity among 
the speakers: individuals of every degree of gift are 


found using, each according to his power, the same 


4 INTRODUCTORY. 


identical dialect; and souls of kindred calibre in differ. 
ent societies can hold no communion together. Nor 
does it accord with geographical divisions ; nor yet, in 
its limits and degrees, with the apparent limits of 
races. Not seldom, far greater race-differences are met 
with among the speakers of one language, or of one 
body of resembling languages, than between those who 
use dialects wholly unlike one another. 

These, and their like, are the problems which oc- 
cupy the attention of those who pursue the science of 
language, or linguistic science. That science strives to 
comprehend language, both in its unity, as a means of 
human expression and as distinguished from brute 
communication, and in its internal variety, of material 
and structure. It seeks to discover the cause of the 
resemblances and differences of languages, and to effect 
a classification of them, by tracing out the lines of re- 
semblance, and drawing the limits of difference. It 
seeks to determine what language is in relation to 
thought, and how it came to sustain this relation; 
what keeps up its life and what has kept it in existence 
in, past time, and even, if possible, how it came into 
existence at all. It seeks to know what language is 
worth to the mind, and what has been its part in the 
development of our race. And, less directly, it seeks 
to learn and set forth what it may of the history of hu- 
man development, and of the history of races, their 
movements and connections, so far as these are to be 
read in the facts of language. . 

No reflecting and philosophizing people has ever 
been blind to the exceeding interest of problems like 
these, or has failed to offer some contribution toward 
their solution. Yet the body of truth discovered in 
earlier times has been so small, that the science of lan- 


THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 5 


guage is to be regarded as a modern one, as much so 
as geology and chemistry ; it belongs, like them, to the 
nineteenth century. To review its history is no part of 
our present task; no justice could be done the subject 
within the space that could be spared it in this volume; 
and the few words that we can bestow upon it will be 
better said in the last chapter than here. Although of 
so recent growth, the science of language is already 
one of the leading branches of modern inquiry. It is 
not less comprehensive in its material, definite in its 
aims, strict in its methods, and rich and fruitful in its 
results, than its sister sciences. Its foundations have 
been laid deep and strong in the thorough analysis of 
many of the most important human tongues, and the 
careful examination and classification of nearly all the 
rest. It has yielded to the history of mankind as a 
whole, and to that of the different races of men, defi- 
nite truths and far-reaching glimpses of truth which 
could be won in no other way. It is bringing about a 
re-cast of the old methods of teaching even familiar 
_ and long-studied languages, like the Latin and Greek ; 
it is drawing forward to conspicuous notice others of 
which, only a few years ago, hardly the names were 
known. It has, in short, leavened all the connected 
branches of knowledge, and worked itself into the very 
structure of modern thought, so that no one who hears 
or reads‘can help taking some cognizance of it. No 
educated person can afford to lack a clear conception 
of at least a brief connected outline of a science pos- 
sessing such claims to attention. 

The design of this volume, accordingly, is to draw 
out and illustrate the principles of linguistic science, 
and to set forth its results, with as much fullness as the 
limited space at command shall allow. The study is 


6 | INTRODUCTORY. 


not yet so developed and established as not to include 
subjects respecting which opinions still differ widely 
and deeply. But direct controversy will be avoided ; 
and the attempt will be made to construct an argu- 
ment which shall commend itself to acceptance by the 
coherence of its parts and the reasonableness of its 
conclusions. In accordance with the plan of the series 
of treatises into which this enters as a member, sim- 
plicity and popular apprehensibility will be everywhere 
aimed at. To start from obvious or familiar truths, 
to exemplify by well-known facts, will be found, it is 
believed, the best way to arrive with assurance at the 
wtimate results sought after. The prime facts of lan- 
guage lie, as it were, within the easy grasp of every 
man who speaks—yet more, of every man who has 
studied other languages than his own—and to direct 
intelligent attention toward that which is essential, to 
point out the general in the midst of the particular 
and the fundamental underneath the superficial, in 
matters of common knowledge, is a method of instruc- 
tion which cannot but bear good fruit. 


CELAP TE Re LI: 


HOW EACH INDIVIDUAL ACQUIRES HIS LANGUAGE: LIFE 
OF LANGUAGE. 


Language learned, not inherited or made, by the individual ; process of 
children’s learning to speak; what this involves, outside the prov- 
ince of the linguistic student. Origin of particular words. Charac- 
ter of a word as sign for a conception. Mental training in learning 
language ; determination of the inner form of language from with- 
out; constraint and advantage in the process. Acquisition of a 
second language, or of more than one; learning even of native 
speech a never-ending process. Imperfection of the word as sign; 
language only the apparatus of thought. 


Tuere can be asked respecting language no other 
question of a more elementary and at the same time 
of a more fundamentally important character than this: 
how is language obtained by us? how does each speak- 
ing individual become possessed of his speech? Its 
true answer involves and determines well-nigh the 
whole of linguistic philosophy. 

There are probably few who would not at once re- 
ply that we learn our language; it is taught us by 
those among whom our lot is cast in childhood. And 
this obvious and common-sense answer is also, as we 
shall find on a more careful and considerate inquiry, 
the correct one. We have to look to see what is im- 
plied in it. 


8 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


In the first place, it sets aside and denies two other 
conceivable answers: that language is a race-character- 
istic, and, as such, inherited from one’s ancestry, along 
with color, physical constitution, traits of character, 
and the like ; and that it is independently produced by 
each individual, in the natural course of his bodily and 
mental growth. 

Against both these excluded views of the acquisi- 
tion of language may be brought such an array of facts 
so familiar and undeniable that they cannot be serious- 


ly upheld. Against the theory of a language as a race- 


characteristic may be simply set, as sufficient rebutting 
evidence, the existence of a community like the Ameri- 
can, where there are in abundance descendants of Af- 
rican, of Irish, of German, of southern European, of 
Asiatic, as well as of English ancestors, all using the 
same dialect, without other variety than comes of dif- 
ferences of locality and education, none showing a 
trace of any other “mother-tongue” or “native 
speech.” But the world is full of such cases, on the 
small scale and on the large. Any child of parents liv- 
ing in a forcign country grows up to speak the foreign 
speech, unless carefully guarded from doing so 3 or, it 
speaks both this and the tongue of its parents, with 
equal readiness. The children of missionary families 
furnish the most striking examples of this class: no 
matter where they may be in the world, among what 
remotely kindred or wholly unrelated dialects, they ac- 
quire the local speech as “naturally” as do the chil- 
dren of the natives. And it is only necessary that the 
child of English or German or Russian parents, born 
in their native country, should (as is often done) be put 
with a French nurse, and hear French alone spoken 
about it, and it will grow up to speak French first and 


f . \ te 
ha ea 


LANGUAGE NOT INHERITED. 9 


French only, just as if it were a French child. And 
what is French, and who are its speakers? The mass 
of the people of France are Celts by descent, with 
characteristic Celtic traits which no mixture or educa- 
tion has been able to obliterate ; but there is hardly an 
appreciable element of Celtic in the French language ; 
this is almost purely a Romanic dialect, a Egdern rep- 
resentative of the ancient Latin. There are few un- 
mixed languages in the world, as there are few unmixed 
races ; but the one mixture does not at all determine 
the other, or measure it. The English is a very strik- 
ing proof of this; the preponderating French-Latin 
element in our vocabulary gets its most familiar and 
indispensable part from the Normans, a Germanic race, 
who got it from the French, a Celtic race, who got it 
from the Italians, among whom the Latin-speaking 
community were at first a very insignificant element, 
numerically. It is useless to bring up further exam- 
ples ; the force of those here given will be sufficiently 
supported by our later inquiry into the actual eee 
of acquisition of language. 

So far as the other theory, that of independent pro- 


duction by each person of his own speech, implies that 


each inherits from his ancestors a physical constitution 
which makes him develop unconsciously the same 
speech as theirs, it is virtually coincident with the first 
theory, and the same facts tell with crushing weight 
against it; so far as it is meant to imply that there is 
a general likeness in intellectual constitution between 
members of the same community which leads them to 
frame accordant systems of expression, it is equally 
without support from facts; for the distribution of 
human dialects is as irreconcilable with that of natural 
capacity and bent as with that of physical form among 


10 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


human beings. Every varicty of gift is found among 
those who employ, each with his own degree of skill 
and capacity, the same speech ; and souls of commen- 
surate calibre in different communities are unable to 
have intercourse together. 

We come, then, to consider directly the process by 
which the child becomes able to speak a certain lan- 
guage—a process sufficiently under every one’s obser- 
vation to allow of general and competent criticism of 
any attempted description of it. We cannot, it is true, 
follow with entire comprehension all the steps of evo- 
lution of the infantile and childish powers ; but we can 
understand them well enough for our purpose. 

The first thing which the child has to learn, before 
speech is possible, is to observe and distinguish ; to 
recognize the persons and things about him, in their 


concrete individuality, and to notice as belonging to” 


them some of their characteristic qualities and acts. 
This is a very brief description of a very intricate psy- 
chological process—which, however, it does not belong 
to the student of language to draw out in greater de- 


tail. There is involved in it, we may further remark , 


in passing, nothing which some of the lower animals 


may not achieve. At the same time, the child is ex- 


ercising his organs of utterance, and gaining conscious 
command of them, partly by a mere native impulse to 
the exertion of all his native powers, partly by imita- 
tion of the sound-making persons about him: the child 
brought up in solitude would be comparatively silent. 
This physical process is quite analogous with the train- 
ing of the hands: for some six months the child tosses 
them about, he knows not how or why; then he begins 
to notice them and work them under command, till at 
length he can do by conscious volition whatever is 


a “~ ‘ ‘ 
a ee eee 


a 


LEARNING TO SPEAK. 11 


within their power. Control and management of the 
organs of utterance comes much more slowly ; but the 
time arrives when the child can imitate at least some 
of the audible as well as the visible acts of others; can 
reproduce a given sound, asa given gesture. But be- 
fore this, he has learned to associate with some of the 
objects familiar to him the names by which they are 
called; a result of much putting of the two together 
on the part of his instructors. Here is seen more 
markedly, at least in degree, the superiority of human 
endowment. The association in question is doubtless 
at the outset no easy thing, even for the child ; he does 
not readily catch the idea that a set of sounds belongs 
to and represents a thing—any more than, when older, 
the idea that a series of written characters represents a 
word; but their connection is set so often and so dis- 
tinctly before him as to be learned at last, just as the 
connection is learned between sugar and pleasure to 
the taste, between a rod and retribution for misbe- 
havior. And every child begins to know things by 
their names long before he begins to call them. The 
next step is to imitate and reproduce the familiar name, 
usually at first in the most imperfect way, by a mere 
hint of the true sound, intelligible only to the child’s 
constant attendants ; and when that step is taken, then 
for the first time is made a real beginning of the ac- 
quisition of language. 

Though not all children start with the acquisition 
of precisely the same words, yet their limit of variety 
is but a narrow one. We may take as fair examples 
of at least the very early ones the childish names for 
‘father’ and ‘mother, namely papa and mamma, and 
the words water, milk, good. And we have to notice 
especially both how wholly external is the process 


12 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


which makes the child connect these particular names 
with their respective ideas, and how empirical and im- 
perfect are the ideas themselves. What is really im- 
plied in papa and mamma, the child does not in the 
least know ; to him they are only signs for certain lov- 
ing and caring individuals, distinguished most con- 
spicuously by differences of dress; and the chance is 
(and it not seldom chances) that he will give the same 
names to other individuals showing like diilerences ; 
the real relation of male and female parent to child he 
comes to comprehend only much later—not to speak 
of the physiological mysteries involved in it, which no 
man yet comprehends. As little does he understand 
the real nature of water and milk; he knows no more 
than that, among the liquids (that name, to be sure, 
comes much later, but not till long after the child has 
realized the distinction of liquid and solid) constantly 
brought before him there are two which he readily dis- 
tinguishes, by look and by taste, and to which other 
people give these names ; and he follows their example. 
The names are provisional, convenient nuclei for the 
gathering of more knowledge about ; where the liquids 
come from will be learned by and by, and their chemi- 
cal constitution, perhaps, in due time. As for good, 
the first association of the term is probably with what 
has a pleasant taste; then what is otherwise agreeable 
comes to be comprehended under the same name; it 
gets applied to behavior which is agreeable to the par- 
ents, as judged by a standard which the child himself 
is far from understanding—and this transfer to a moral 
sphere is by no means an easy one; as he grows up, 
the child is (perhaps) all the time learning to distin- 
guish more accurately between good and bad; but he 
is likely to be at the last baffled by finding that the 


; = % 
lie i alle ats! 


LEARNING TO SPEAK. 13 


wisest heads in the world have been and are irrecon- 
cilably at variance as to what good really means— 
whether it implies only utility, or an independent and 
absolute principle. 

These are only typical examples, fairly illustrating 
the whole process of speech-getting. The child begins 
as a learner, and he continues such. ‘There is continu- 
ally in presence of his intellect more and better than 
he can grasp. By words he is made to form dim con- 
ceptions, and draw rude distinctions, which after ex- 
perience shall make truer and more distinct, shall 
deepen, explain, correct. He has no time to be origi- 
nal; far more rapidly than his crude and confused im- 
pressions can crystallize independently into shape, they 
are, under the example and instruction of others, cen- 
tred and shaped about certain definite points. So it 
goes on indefinitely. The young mind is always learn- 
ing words, and things through words; in all other cases 
as really, if not so obviously, as when, by description 
and picture or by map and plan, it is led to form some 
inaccurate half-conception of the animal dzon or the 
city Peking. The formal distinctions made by the in- 
flectional system of even so simple a language as Eng- 
lish, and by words of relation, are at first out of the 
child’s reach. He can grasp and wield only the grosser 
elements of speech. He does not apprehend the rela- 
tion of one and more than one clearly enough to use 
the two numbers of nouns; the singular has to do duty 
for both; and so also the root-form of the verb, to the 
neglect of persons, tenses, and moods. It is an era in 
his education when he first begins to employ preterits 
and plurals and their like. So with the pronouns. He 
is slow to catch the trick of those shifting names, ap- 
plied to persons according as they are speaking, spoken 


14 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


to, or spoken of; he does not see why each should not 
have an own name, given alike in all situations: and he 
speaks of himself and others by such a name and such 
only, or blunders sorely in trying to do otherwise— 
till time and practice set him right."| Thus, in every 
respect, language is the expression of matured and 
practised thought, and the young learner enters into 
the use of it as fast as natural capacity and favoring 
circumstances enable him to do so. Others have ob- 
served, and classified, and abstracted; he only reaps 
the fruit of their labors. It is precisely as when the 
child studies mathematics ; he goes over and appropri- 
ates, step by step, what others have wrought out, by 
means of word and sign and symbol; and he thus 
masters ina few years what it has taken generations 
and ages to produce, what his unaided intellect could 
never have produced; what, perhaps, he could never 
independently have produced a single item of, having 
just mental force enough to follow and acquire it: 
though also, perhaps, he has capacity to increase it by 
and by, adding something new for those to learn who 
come after him—even as the once educated speaker 
may come to add, in one way and another (as will be 
pointed out later), new stores of expression to language. 

In all this, now, is involved infinitely more than 
linguistic science has any call to deal with and explain. 
Let us consider, for example, the word green. Its pres- 
ence in our vocabulary implies first the physical cause 
of the color, wherein is involved the whole theory of 
optics: and this concerns the physicist ; it is for him 
to talk of the ether and its vibrations, and of the fre- 

1The amount of sapient philosophy which has been aimlessly ex- 


pended on this simple fact—as if it involved the metaphysical distinction 
of the ego and the non-eyo—is something truly surprising. 


WHAT IS INVOLVED IN SPEAKING. 15 


quency and length of the waves which produce the 
sensation of greenness. Then there is the structure 
of the eye: its wondrous and mysterious sensitiveness 
to just this kind of vibration, the apparatus of nerves 
which conveys the impression to the brain, the cere- 
bral structure which receives the impression : to treat 
of all this is the duty of the physiologist. His domain 
borders and overlaps that of the psychologist, who has 
to tell us what he can of the intuition and resulting 
conception, considered as mode and product of mental 
action, of the power of apprehension and distinction 
and abstraction, and of the sway of consciousness over 
the whole. Then, in the hearing of the word green is 
involved the wonderful power of audition, closely akin 
with that of vision: another sensitive apparatus, which 
notes and reports another set of vibratory waves, in 
another vibrating medium: it falls, like vision, into the 
hands of the physicist and physiologist. They, too, 
have to do with the organs of utterance, which produce 
the audible vibration; with their obedience to the di- 
rections of the will: directions given but not executed 
under the review of consciousness, and implying that 
control of the mind over the muscular apparatus of the 
body which is by no means the least of mysteries. We 
might go on indefinitely thus, noticing what is included 
in the simplest linguistic act ; and -behind all would lie 
as a background the great mystery of existence and its 
cause, which no philosophy has yet been able to do 
more than recognize. Every part of this is of interest- 
and importance to the linguistic scholar, but each in 
its own way and degree; and his specific and central 
business is with none of it, but rather with something 
else. This, namely: there exists an uttered and audi- 
ble sign, green, by which, in a certain community, are 
5 : 


16 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


designated a certain class of kindred shades among the 
infinitely varied hues of nature and of art; and every 
person who, by birth or by immigration or as a visitor 
(a bodily visitor, or only 2 mental one, as student of its 
literature), comes into the community in question, 
learns to associate that sign with the given group of 
shades, and to understand and employ it as designat- 
ing them; and he learns to classify the infinity of hues 
under that and certain other signs, of like nature and 
use. About this pivotal fact all the other matters in- 
volved fall into position as more or less nearly auxili- 
ary; from it as point of view they are judged and have 
their value estimated. Language, both in its single 
items and as a whole, is primarily the sign of the idea, 
the sign with its accompanying idea; and to take any 
other department of the questions involved as the cen- 


tral one is to throw the whole into a false position, dis- . 


torting the proportions and relations of every part. 
And, as the science of language seeks after causes, en- 
deavors to explain the facts of language, the primary 
inquiry respecting this fact is: how came this sign to 
be thus used? what is the history of its production and 


application ? and even, what is its ultimate origin and — 


the reason of it ? provided we can reach so far. 

For there is, recognizably and traceably, a time 
when and a reason why many of our words came into 
use as signs for the ideas they represent. For exam- 
ple, a certain other shade of color, a peculiar red, was 
produced (with more, of its kind) not many years ago, 
as result of the chemical manipulation of coal tar, and 
was, reflectively and artificially, called by its inventor 
magenta, after the name of a place which a great battle 
had recently made famous. The word magenta is just 
as real and legitimate a part of the English language 


ae eee 


=. 


HISTORY OF WORDS. 1" 


as green, though vastly younger and less important ; 
and those who acquire and use the latter do so in pre- 
cisely the same manner as the former, and generally 
with equal ignorance and unconcern as to its origin. 
The word gas is of much longer standing and wider use 
with us, and has its respectable family of derivatives 
and compounds—as gaseous, gasify, gas-pipe—and even 
its colloquial figurative uses—as when we call an empty 
and sophistical but ready talker gasky ; but it was the 
wholly arbitrary invention of a Dutch chemist (Van 
Helmont), about a. p. 1600. Science was at that time 
getting so far along as to begin to form the distinct 
conception of an aériform or gaseous condition of exist- 
ence of matter; and this name chanced to be intro- 
duced and supported in a way that commended it to 
general acceptance ; and so it became the name, and 
for all Europe. The young now for thé most part 
know it first as the title of a certain kind of gas, made 
practically useful in giving light; but by and by, if 
fairly educated, they are led in connection with the 
word to form for themselves the scientific idea of which 
this is the sign. To trace the history of these two vo- 
cables is to inform ourselves as to the time and the cir- 
cumstances of production of the aniline colors, and as 
to the taking of a certain important step forward in 
scientific thinking. We cannot follow so clearly tow- 
ard or to its source the word green, because it is vastly 
older, reaching back far beyond the period of literary 
record; but we do seem to arrive by inference at a 
connection of it with our word grow, and at seeing 
that a green thing was named from its being a growing 
thing ; and this is a matter of no small inter est as bear- 
ing on the history of the word. 

It is not the place here to follow up this line of in- 


‘aN 


18 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


quiries, and see what is meant by etymologizing, or 
tracing the history of words toward their origin ; the 
subject is one which will occupy us more properly later. 
We touch it in passing merely in order to note that the 
reason of first attribution of a sign to its specific use 
is one thing, and that the reason of its after employ- 
ment in that use is another and a very different thing. 
To the child learning to speak, all signs are in them- 
selves equally good for all things; he could acquire 
and reproduce one as well as another for a given pur- 
pose. In fact, children in different communities do 
learn every possible variety of names for the same 
thing: instead of green, the German child learns grun, 
the Dutch groen, the Swedish grén—all related to our 
green, yet not identical with it; and the French child 
learns vert, the Spanish verde, the Italian virede—a sim1- 
lar group of related yet diverse names ; while the Kus- 
sian says zéleniiz, the Hungarian 2éld, the Turk zshdl, 
the Arab akhsar,and so on. Each of these, and of hun- 
dreds of others, is obtained in the same way: the child 
hears it uttered by those about him under such circum- 
stances as make plain to him what it signifies; by its 
aid he in part learns to abstract the quality of color 
from the colored object and conceive it separately ; and 
he learns to combine in one comprehensive conception 
the different shades of green, distinguishing them to- 
gether from the other colors, as blue and yellow, into 
which they pass by insensible gradations. The learner 
grasps the conception, at least in a measure, and then 
associates his own word with it by a purely external tie, 
having been able, if so guided, to form the same asso- 
ciation with any other existing or possible word, and 
not less easily and surely. An internal and necessary 
tie between word and idea is absolutely non-existent for 


bee co 


WORDS ARBITRARY AND CONVENTIONAL. 19 


him ; and whatever historical reason there may be is 
also non-existent to his sense. He may sometimes ask 
“what for?” about a word, as he does, in his childish 
curiosity, about everything else; but it makes no differ- 
ence with the young etymologist (any more than with 
the older one) what answer he gets, or whether he gets 
an answer ; to him, the sole and sufficient reason why he 
should use this particular sign is that it is used by those 
about him. In the true and proper meaning of the terms, 
then, every word handed down in every human language 
is an arbitrary and conventional sign: arbitrary, because 
any one of the thousand other words current among men, 
or of the tens of thousands which might be fabricated, 
could have been equally well learned and applied to 
this particular purpose ; conventional, because the rea- 
son for the use of this rather than another lies solely in 
the fact that it is already used in the community to 
which the speaker belongs. The word exists Oécet, ‘ by 
attribution,’ and not ddces, ‘by nature,’ in the sense 
that there is, either in the nature of things in general, 
or in the nature of the individual speaker who uses it, 
any reason that prescribes and determines it. | 

There is obviously mental training and shaping, as 
well as mental equipment, in the process of learning to 
speak. The mental action of the individual is schooled 
into certain habits, consonant with those of his com- 
munity ; he acquires the current classifications and ab- 
stractions and ways of looking at things. To take an 
example: the quality of color is so conspicuous, and 
our apprehension of it so urged by the infinity of its 
manifested differences which are ever before our eyes, 
that the conception of color is only quickened and ren- 
dered more distinct by acquisition of the words which 
denote it. But in the classification of the shades of hue — 


20 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


the phraseology of the language acquired bears a deter- 
mining part; they fall into order under and about the 
leading names, as white, black, red, blue, green; and 
each hue is tested in the mind by aid of these, and re- 
ferred to the one or the other class. And different 
languages make different classifications : some of them 
so unlike ours, so much less elaborate and complete, 
that their acquisition gives the eye and mind a very 
inferior training in distinguishing colors. This is still 
more strikingly the case as regards number. ‘There 
are dialects which are in a state of infantile bewilder- 
ment before the problem of numeration; they have 
words for ‘ one,’ ‘ two,’ and ‘three ;’ but all beyond is 
an undivided ‘many.’ None of us, it is tolerably cer- 
tain, would ever have gone farther than that by his 
own absolutely unassisted efforts; but by words—and 
only by words ; for such is the abstractness of the rela- 
tions of number that they, more than any others, are 
dependent for their realization and manageableness on 
expression—more and more intricate numerical rela- 
tions have been mastered by us, until finally we are 
provided with a system which is extensible to every 
thing short of infinity—the decimal system, namely, or 
that which proceeds by constant additions of ten indi- 
viduals of any given denomination to form the next 
higher. And what is the foundation of this system 4 
Why, as every one knows, the simple fact that we have 
ten fingers (“ digits”) on our two hands; and that fin- 
gers are the handiest substitutes for figures, the most 
ready and natural of aids to an unready reckoner. A 


fact as external and physical as this, and seemingly so 


trivial, has shaped the whole science of mathematics, 
and, altogether without his being aware of it, gives 
form to all the numerical conceptions of each new 


MENTAL TRAINING BY LANGUAGE. 21 


learner. It is a suggestion of general human experi- 
ence in the past, transmitted through language into a 
law for the government of thought in the future. 

The same, in varying way and measure, is true of 
every part of language. All through the world of 
matter and of mind, our predecessors, with such wis- 
dom as they had at command, have gone observing, de- 
ducing, and classifying ; and we inherit in and through 
language the results of their wisdom. So with the dis- 
tinctions of living and lifeless ; of animal and. vege- 
table and mineral ; of jish and reptile and bird and in- 
sect; of tree and bush and herb; of rock and pebble 
and sand and dust. So with those of body, life, mind, 
spirit, soul, and their kindred. So with the qualities 
of objects, both physical and moral, and with their re- 
lations, through the whole round of the categories: 
position and succession, form and size, manner and de- 
gree: all, in their indefinite multitude, are divided and 
grouped, like the shades of color, and each group has 
its own sign, to guide the apprehension and help the 
discrimination of him who uses it. So, once more, 
with the apparatus of logical statement: the ability to 
put a subject and predicate closely together, and to test 
their correspondence by repeated comparison, comes 
only by language ; and it is the fruitful means where- 
by old cognitions are corrected and new ones attained. 
So, in fine, with the auxiliary apparatus of inflections 
and form-words, wherein various tongues are most of 
all discordant, each making its own selection of what it 
will express and what it will leave for the mind to un- 
derstand without expression. 

Every single language has thus its own peculiar 
framework of established distinctions, its shapes and 
forms of thought, into which, for the human being who 


92 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


learns that language as his “ mother-tongue,” 1s cast 
the content and product of his mind, his store of im- 
pressions, however acquired, his experience and knowl- 
edge of the world. This is what is sometimes called 
the “inner form” of language—the shape and cast of 
thought, as fitted to a certain body of expression. 
But it comes as the result of external influence ; it is 
an accompaniment of the process by which the indi- 
vidual acquires the body of expression itself; it is not 
a product of his internal forces, in their free and undi- 
rected workings; it is something imposed from with- 
out. It amounts simply to this: that the mind which 
was capable of doing otherwise has been led to view 
things in this particular way, to group them in a cer- 
tain manner, to contemplate them consciously in these 
and those relations. 

There is thus an element of constraint in language- 
learning. But it isan element of which the learner is 
wholly unconscious. Whatever language he first ac- 
quires, this is to him the natural and necessary way of 
thinking and speaking; he conceives of no other as 


even possible. The case could not be otherwise. For | 


even the poorest language in existence is so much bet- 
ter than any one’s powers could have produced unaided, 
that its acquisition would imply a greatly accelerated 
drawing out and training of the powers of even the 
most gifted being; the advantage is so great that the 
disadvantage entirely disappears before it. We, to be 
sure, looking on from without, can sometimes find rea- 
son for regret, saying: ‘ Here is a man of capacities 
far beyond the average of the degraded community of 
which he isa member; in justice to those capacities, 
he should have had his birth where a higher language 
would have developed them into what they were able 


ee ee ee ee a 


ADVANTAGE IN THE USE OF LANGUAGE. 23 


to become; only,” we should have to add, “ this bar- 
barian tongue raises him far above what. he could have 
become had he never learned to speak at all.’ More- 
over, it is far oftener the case that the individual’s lin- 
guistic lot is beyond his deserts; that he acquires a 
language above his level, and would have been better 
fitted by a lower dialect. 

It is not easy to over-estimate the advantage won by 
the mind in the obtaining of a language. Its confused 
impressions are thus reduced to order, brought under 
the distinct review of consciousness and within reach 
of reflection ; an apparatus is provided with which it 
can work, like the artisan with his tools. There is no 
other parallel so close, as regards both the kind and the 
degree of assistance afforded, as this between words, 
the instruments of thought, and those other instru- 
ments, the creation and the aids of man’s manual dex- 
terity. By as much as, supplied with these, man can 
traverse space, handle and shape materials, frame text- 
ures, penetrate distance, observe the minute, beyond 
what he could compass with his unequipped physical 
powers, by so much is the reach and grasp, the pene- 
tration and accuracy, of his thought increased by speech. 
This part of the value of speech is by no means easy 
to bring to full realization, because our minds are so 
used to working by and through words that they can- 
not even conceive of the plight they would be in if de- 
prived of such helps. But we may think, for example, 
of what the mathematician would be without figures 
and symbols. 

In respect to this general training and equipment 
of the mind for work, the first acquisition of a lan- 
guage does for the individual what can never be re- 
peated later. When we first take hold of an additional 


24 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


language, we cannot help translating its signs into 
those we already know; the peculiarities of its ‘inner 
form,” the non-identity and incommensurability of its 
shaped and grouped ideas with those of our native 
speech, escape our notice. As we gain familiarity with 
it, as our conceptions adapt themselves to its frame- 
work and operate directly through it, we come to see 
that our thoughts are cast by it into new shapes, that 
its phraseology is its own and inconvertible. Perhaps 
it is here that we get our most distinct hint of the ele- 
ment of constraint in language-learning. Certainly, 
the exceptionally-gifted Polynesian or African who 
should learn a European language—as English, French, 
German—would find himself prepared for labor in de- 
partments of mental action which had before been in- 
accessible to him, and would realize how his powers 
had been balked of their best action by the possession 
of only the inferior instrument. The scholars of the 
Middle Ages, who employed the Latin for the expres- 
sion of their higher thought, did so partly because the 
popular dialects had not yet become enriched to a ca- 
pacity for aiding the production of such thought and 
for expressing it. 

But in all other, respects, the learning of a second 
language is precisely the same process as the learning 
of a first, of one’s own “mother-tongue.” It is the 
memorizing of a certain body of signs for conceptions 
and their relations, used in a certain community, exist- 
ing or extinct—signs which have no more natural and 
necessary connection with the conceptions they indicate 
than our own have, but are equally arbitrary and con- 
ventional with the latter; and of which we may make 
ourselves masters to a degree dependent only on our 
opportunities, our capacity, our industry, and the length 


LANGUAGE-LEARNING AN ENDLESS PROCESS. 25 


of time devoted to the work; even coming to substi- 
tute, if circumstances favor, the second language in our 
constant and ready use, and to become unfamiliar with 
and forget its predecessor. 

We realize better in the case of a second or “ for- 
eign,” than in that of a first or “native” language, 
that the process of acquisition is a never-ending one; 
but it is not more true of the one than of the other. 
We say, to be sure, of a child who has reached a cer- 
tain grade that he “has learned to speak;” but we 
mean by this only that he has acquired a limited num- 
ber of signs, sufficient for the ordinary purposes of the 
childish life, together with the power, by much prac- 
tice, of wielding them with adroitness and general cor- 
rectness. There are, probably, only a few hundred 
such signs, all told; and outside their circle, the Eng- 
lish is as much an unknown language to the child as is 
German, or Chinese, or Choctaw. Even. ideas which 
he is fully able to grasp when put into his acquired 
phraseology are unintelligible if expressed as grown-up 
men would naturally write them ; they must be trans- 
lated into childish phrase. What he has is especially 
the central core of language, as we may call it: signs 
for the most commonly recurring conceptions, words 
which every speaker uses'every day. As he grows 
older, as his powers develop and his knowledge in- 
creases, he acquires more and more; and in different 
departments, according to circumstances. He who has 
to turn at once to the hard work of life may add to the 
first childish store little besides the technical expres- 
sions belonging to his own narrow vocation; he, on 
the other hand, who devotes years to the sole work of 
getting himself educated, and continues to draw in 
knowledge through the rest of his life, appropriates 


26 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


constantly larger stores, and rises to higher styles of ex- 
pression. The ordinary vocabulary of the educated, in- 
cluding a great variety of the technical terms of special 
branches of knowledge with which the educated man 
must have at least a degree of acquaintance, he may 
come to understand and to use with intelligence; but 
there will be whole bodies of English expression which 
he cannot wield, as well as styles to which he does 
not attain. The vocabulary of a rich and long-culti- 
vated language like the English may be roughly esti- 
mated at about 100,000 words (although this excludes a 
great deal which, if “ English” were understood in its 
widest sense, would have to be counted in); but thirty 
thousand is a very large estimate for the number ever 
used, in writing or speaking, by a well-educated man ; 
three to five thousand, it has been carefully estimated, 
cover the ordinary needs of cultivated intercourse ; 
and the number acquired by persons of lowest training 
and narrowest information is considerably less than 
this. Nowhere more clearly than here does it appear 
that one gets his language by a process of learning, and 
only thus; for all this gradual increase of one’s lin- 
guistie resources goes on in the most openly external 
fashion, by dint of hearing and reading and study; and 
it is obviously only a continuation, under somewhat 
changed circumstances, of the process of acquisition of 
the first nucleus ; while the whole is parallel to the be- 
ginning and growth of one’s command of a “ foreign ” 
tongue. 

The same thing, however, appears clearly enough, 
if we consider more narrowly the somewhat shifting 
relations between our linguistic signs and the concep- 
tions for which they stand. The relation is established 
at first by a tentative process, liable to error and sub- 


DIFFICULTIES OF CLASSIFICATION. a7 


ject to amendment. The child finds out very soon that 
names do not in general belong to single objects alone, 
but rather to classes of related objects ; and his power 
of noting resemblances and differences, the most fun- 
damental activity of intellect, is from the first called 
into lively action and trained by the constant necessity 
of applying names rightly. But the classes are of every 
variety of extent, and in part determined by obscure 
and perplexing criteria. We have noted already the 
natural and frequent childish error of using papa and 
mamma in the sense of ‘man’ and ‘woman ;? the child 
is puzzled, by and by, by finding that there are other 
papas and mammas, though he must not call them so. 
An older child he learns to call, for example, George ; 
but he finds that he must not say George of other kin- 
dred beings ; there is another word, doy, for that use. 
But then, again, he makes acquaintance with still other 
Georges ; and to find the tie that binds them into a 
class together isa problem quite beyond his powers. 
A variety of creatures of very diverse appearance he 
learns to call dog ; but he may not take the same lib- 
erty with horse ; though mules and donkeys are much 
more like horses than greyhounds and lapdogs are like 
terriers, they must be carefully distinguished in appel- 
lation. A sun in a picture is still a swn; and in a culti- 
vated community the child soon gets his imagination 
trained to recognize the pictured representations of 
things, and to call them by the same names, while 
still distinctly aware of the relation between thing and 
picture; while a grown-up untutored savage is com- 
pletely baffled by such a counterfeit, seeing in it only a 
confusion of lines and scratches. A toy house or tree 
is to have the title house or tree ; but a kind of toy hu- 
man being has the specific name of doll. The words 


28 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


of degree have their peculiarities of application : near 
ig sometimes at an inch of distance, sometimes at a 
rod; a big apple is not nearly so big as a little house 5 
a long time means a few minutes or a few years. 
The inconsistencies of expression are numberless ; and 
till added experience explains them, there is room for 
misapprehensions and blunders. Moreover, there are 
cases in which the difficulty is much more persistent, 
or is never wholly removed. ish even adult appre- 
hension makes to include whales and dolphins, till sci- 
entific knowledge points out a fundamental difference 
as underlying the superficial resemblance. 

But it is especially in regard to matters of which 
the knowledge is won in a more artificial way, that the 
beginner’s ideas are vague and insufficient. For ex- 
ample, children are apt to be taught the names and 
definitions of geographical objects and relations with- 
out gaining any real comprehension of what it all 
means; a map, a more unintelligible kind of picture, is 
little better than a puzzle; and even older children, or 
grown men, have defective conceptions which are only 
rectified by exceptional experience in after-life. Local- 
ities, of course, are most incorrectly imagined by those 
who have not seen them. Of Sedan, Peking, Hawaii, 
Chimborazo, every well-instructed person knows enough 
to be able to talk about them; but how imperfectly do 
we conceive them, as compared with one who has lived 
at or near them! We have to be extremely careful, in 
teaching the young, not to push them on too rapidly, 
lest we prove to have been building up a mere artificial 
and empty structure of names, without real enlighten- 
ment. And yet, something of this is unavoidable, a 
necessary incident of instruction. A host of grand 
conceptions are put before the youthful mind, and kept 


IMPERFECTION OF LANGUAGE. 29 


there by a paltry association or two, while it is left for 
atter-development to fill them out to more nearly their 
true value. The child is ludicrously unable at first to 
know what is meant by God, or good, or duty, or con- 
scvence, or the world, even as sun and moon, weight 
and color, involve infinitely more than he has an ink- 
ling of; but the word, in each case, gives him a definite 
nucleus, about which more and ever more knowledge 
may be grouped; he makes a constant approach toward 
the right conception, even if it be one to which no hu- 
man wisdom has yet attained. For the condition of 
the child, after all, differs only in degree from that of 
the man, and in no very great degree. Our words are \ 
too often signs for crude and hasty, for indefinite and 
indefinable, generalizations. We use them accurately 
enough for the ordinary practical purposes of life; and 
most of mankind go through life content with that, let- 
ting instruction and experience bring what improve- 
ment they may; few have the independence, even if 
they had the time and ability, to test every name to 
the bottom, drawing precise limits about each. For 
the most part, we are loose thinkers and loose talkers, 
misled into error in an infinity of cases by our igno- 
rance of the terms we glibly use. But even the wisest 
and most thorough of us is met by the impossibility of 
giving to speech a preciseness of definition which should 
exclude misunderstanding and unsound reasoning—es- 
pecially as to matters of subjective import, where it is. 
hard to bring conceptions to 2 sharp test. And so the 
differences of view, even of philosophers, take on the 
form of verbal questions, controversies hinge on the 
interpretation of a term, and every writer who aims at 
exactness has to begin with definitions—to which, then, 
he finds it impossible to be faithful; some antagonist 


30 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE. 


or successor, perhaps, shows him to have failed of ex- — 
actness at a critical point, and tumbles into ruins the 
whole magnificent structure of fancied truth which he 
had erected. | 

We see from all this, it may be observed, how far 
language is from being identical with thought. It is 
so just as much as the mathematician’s figures and 
symbols are identical with his conceptions of mathe- 
matical quantities and relations; and not one whit 
more. It is, as we noticed at the outset, the means 
of expression of thought, an instrumentality auxili- 
ary to the processes of thought. An acquired lan- 
guage is something imposed from without upon the 
methods and results of mental action. It does, indeed, 
as a frame-work imposed upon a growing and develop- 
ing body, give shape to that which underlies it, deter- 
mining the “inner form;” and yet it is everywhere 
loose and adjustable. While working by it, the mind 
also works under it, shifting and adapting, changing 
and improving its classifications, working in new knowl- 
edge and better insight. Thus far we have emphasized 
the passive receptive work of the mind in dealing with 
language, because that is, especially at the outset, the 
bulk of its work; in the following chapters we have 
to take account of its more independent and creative 
activity. 

But nothing that has been said is to be misconstrued 
into meaning that the mind is not, in all its work, es- 
sentially an active and creative force, or that it gets by 
instruction a faculty which it did not before possess. 
All that is implied in the power to speak belongs inde- 
feasibly to man, as a part of his natural endowment ; 
put this power is guided in its development, and deter- 
mined in the result it attains, by the example and in- 


LANGUAGE-LEARNING A PART OF EDUCATION. 31 


struction of other minds, already developed. It does 
nothing which it might not have done alone, under 
favoring circumstances, and with sufficient time—the 
life-time, namely, of a few score or hundred genera- 
tions; but for what it actually does, both as regards 
the how much and the how, it has to thank those about 
it. Its acquisition of language is a part of its educa- 
tion, in just the same manner and degree as the other 
parts of education. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE CONSERVATIVE AND ALTERATIVE FORCES IN LAN- 
GUAGE. 


Other side of life of language; growth and change; question of its mode 
and cause. Illustrative passage from oldest English, or Anglo- 
Saxon ; exposition of its differences from modern English: differ- 
ences of pronunciation; abbreviations and extensions ; changes of 
meaning; of phraseology and construction. Classification of lin- 
guistic changes. 


We have scen in the foregoing chapter that the in- 
dividual learns his language, obtaining the spoken signs 
of which it is made up by imitation from the lips of 
others, and shaping his conceptions in accordance with 
them. It is thus that every existing language is main- 
tained in life; if this process of tradition, by teaching 
and learning, were’ to cease in any tongue upon earth, 
that tongue would at once become extinct. 

But this is only one side of the life of language. If 
it were all, then each spoken dialect would remain the 
same from age to age. In virtue of it, each does, in 
fact, remain nearly the same; this is what maintains 
the prevailing identity of speech so long as the iden- 
tity of the speaking community is maintained—aside 
from those great revolutions in their circumstances 
which now and then lead whole communities to adopt 
the speech of another people. This, then, is the grand 


LANGUAGE CONSTANTLY CHANGING. 33 


. conservative force in the history of language ; if there 


were no disturbing and counteracting forces to interfere 
with its workings, every generation to the end of time 
would speak as its predecessors had done. 

Such, however, as every one knows, is very far from 
being the case. All living language is in a condition 
of constant growth and change. It matters not to 
what part of the world we may go: if we can find for 
any existing speech a record of its predecessor at some 
time distant from it in the past, we shall perceive that 
the two are different—and more or less different, main- 
ly in proportion to the distance of time that separates 
them. It is so with the Romanic tongues of southern 
Europe, as compared with their common progenitor the 
Latin ; so with the modern dialects of India, as com- 
pared with the recorded forms of speech intermediate 
between them and the Sanskrit, or with the Sanskrit 
itself; and not less with the English of our day, as 
compared with that of other days. An English speaker 
even of only a century ago would find not a little in 
our every-day speech which he would understand with 
difficulty, or not at all; if we were to hear Shakespeare 
read aloud a scene from one of his own works, it would 
be in no small part unintelligible (by reason, especially, 
of the great difference between his pronunciation and 
ours) ; Chaucer’s English (500 years ago) we master by 
dint of good solid application, and with considerable 
help from a glossary ; and King Alfred’s English (1000. 
years ago), which we call Anglo-Saxon, is not casier to 
us than German. All this, in spite of the fact that no 
one has gone about of set purpose to alter English 
speech, in any generation among the thirty or forty 
that have lived between us and Alfred, any more than 
in our own. Here, then, is another side of the life of 


— 7--—-v.F 


34 CONSERVATIVE AND ALTERATIVE FORCES. 


language for us to deal with, and to explain, if we can. . 
Life, here as elsewhere, appears to involve growth and 
change as an essential element; and the remarkable 
analogies which exist between the birth and growth 
and decay and extinction of a language and those of an 
organized being, or of a species, have been often enough 
noticed and dwelt upon: some have even inferred from 
them that language is an organism, and leads an or- 
ganic life, governed by laws with which men cannot 
interfere. 

Plainly, however, we should be overhasty in resort- 
ing to such an explanation until after mature inquiry 
and deliberation. There is no primd facie impossibil- 
ity that language, if an institution of human device, 
and propagated by tradition, should change. Human 
institutions in general go down from generation to 
generation by a process of transmission. like that of 
language, and they are all modified as they go. On 
the one hand, tradition is by its very nature imperfect 
and inaccurate. No one has ever yet been able to pre- 
vent what passes from mouth to ear from getting al- 
tered on the way. The child always commits blunders, 
of every kind, in his earlier attempts at speaking: if 
careful and well, trained, he learns later to correct 
them; but he is often careless and untrained. And 
all through the lifelong process of learning one’s 
‘“‘ mother-tongue,” one is liable to apprehend wrongly 
and to reproduce inexactly. On the other hand, al- 
though the child in his first stage of learning is more 
than satisfied to take what is set before him and use it 
as he best can, because his mental development is far 
short of that which it represents, and its acquisition is 
urging him on at his best rate of progress, the case 
does not always continue thus with him: by and by 


~ 
™ P 
ee. ee 


. ; 
Oe a a 


INDIVIDUAL CHANGES OF LANGUAGE. 35 


his mind has grown up, perhaps, to the full measure 
of that which his speech represents, and begins to ex- 
hibit its native and surplus force ; it chafes against the 
imposed framework of current expression ; it modifies 
a little its inherited instrument, in order to adapt this 
better to its own purposes. So, to have recourse to an 
obvious analogy, one may, by diligent study under in- 
structors, have reached in some single department—as 
of natural science, mathematics, philosophy—the fur- 
thest limits of his predecessors’ knowledge, and found 
them too strait for him ; he adds new facts, draws new 
distinctions, establishes new relations, which the sub- 
sisting technical language of the department is incom- 
petent to express; and there arises thus an absolute 
need of new expression, which must in some way or 
other be met; and it is met. Every language must 
prove itself able to signify what is in the minds of its 
speakers to express ; if unequal to that, it would have 
to abdicate its office; it would no longer answer the 
purposes of a language. The sum of what all the in- 
dividual speakers contribute to the common store of 
thought and knowledge by original work has to be 
worked into the “inner form ” of their language along 
with and by means of some alteration in its outer form. 

Here, then, at any rate, are two obvious forces, hav- 
ing their roots in human action, and constantly operat- 
ing toward the change of language; and it remains to 
be seen whether there are any others, of a different 
character. Let us, then, proceed to examine the changes 
which actually go on in language, and which by their 
sum and combined effect constitute its growth, and see 
what they will say as to the force that brings them 
about. 

And it will be well to begin with a concrete exam- 


36 CONSERVATIVE AND ALTERATIVE FORCES. 


ple, a specimen of altered speech, which shall serve as 
a source of illustration, and_as groundwork for a clas- 
sification of the kinds of linguistic change. The French- 
man would find his best example in a parallel between 
a phrase of ancient Latin and its correspondent in mod- 
ern French, with intermediate forms from the older 
French; the German could trace a passage backward 
through the Middle to the Old High-German, with 
hints of a yet remoter antiquity derived from the 
Gothic; to the English speaker, nothing else is so 
available as a specimen of the oldest English, or Anglo- 
Saxon, of a thousand years ago. Let us look, then, at 
a verse from the Anglo-Saxon gospels, and compare it 
with its modern counterpart :— 

Se Halend fér on reste-dag ofer ceceras ; sdthlice his 
leorning-cnihtas hyngrede, and hi ongunnon pluccian 
tha ear and etan. 

No ordinary English reader, certainly, would un- 
derstand this, or discover that it is the equivalent of 
the following sentence of our modern version :— 

“‘ Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn ; 
and his disciples were a hungered, and began to pluck 
the ears of corn and to eat.” (Matthew xii. 1.) 

And yet, by translating it as literally as we can, we 
shall find that almost every element in it is still good 
English, only disguised by changes of form and of 
meaning. Thus :— 

‘The Healing [one] fared on rest-day over [the] 
acres ; soothly, his learning-knights [it] hungered, and 
they began [to] pluck the ears and eat.’ 

Thus although, from one point of view, and and 
his are the only words in the Anglo-Saxon passage 
which are the same also in the English—and not even 
those really, since their former pronunciation was some- 


> 
- 
- 
- 


rm : \ 
—— Te ee ee 


CHANGES OF PRONUNCIATION. Se 


what different from their present—from another point 
of view everything is English excepting se, ‘the, and 
hi, ‘they ’—and even those, virtually ; since they are 
cases of inflection of the definite article and third per- 
sonal pronoun, of which other cases (as the, that, they, 
and he, his, him) are still in good use with us. Both 
the discordance and the accordance are complete, ac- 
cording to the way in which we look at them. We 
will proceed to examine the passage a little in detail, 
in order to understand better the relations between the 
older and the newer form. 

In the first place, their pronunciation is even more 
different than is indicated by the written text. There 
are at least two sounds in the Anglo-Saxon which are 
unknown in our present speech: namely, the / of 
cnihtas, which was nearly or quite the same with the 
ch of the corresponding German word knecht, and the 7 
ot hyngrede, which was the German ééand French uw, an 
w{oo)-sound with an <(¢e)-sound intimately combined 
with it. On the other hand, there are sounds in the 
English which were unknown to the Anglo-Saxon. 
Our so-called “ short 0,” of on, was no ancient sound ; 
nor was the “short «” of begun, pluck, which had 
then the vowel-sound of book and full; nor was the 
“short @” of Ads, which was more like the French 
and German short 7, not markedly different in quality 
from the true long 7, our so-called “long e,” or ee-sound. 
All these are examples of the manifold changes of Eng-. 
lish pronunciation during the thousand years since Al- 
fred—changes which have altered the whole aspect of 
our orthoépy and orthography. And others of them 
are illustrated in the passage: for instance, our knight 
and eat show protractions of the short vowels of eniht 
and ¢e¢an, each typical of a whole class of cases; and 


38 CONSERVATIVE AND ALTERATIVE FORCES. 


the lengthened ¢ has been changed into a diphthong, 
which we call “long 4” simply because it has taken the 
place of our former long 7 (¢é) ; while we call the real 
long ¢ of eat by the false name of “long e” for the 
same reason. | 

Again, we may observe in the forms of many words 
the effects of a tendency toward abbreviation. Lzeste 
and hyngrede have lost with us their final e, which in 
Anglo-Saxon, as now in German and Italian, made an 
additional syllable. Ongunnon, pluccian, and etan 
have lost both vowel and consonant of a final syllable ; 
and these syllables were the distinctive endings, in the 
first word of the plural verbal inflection (ongan, ‘I or 
he began,’ but ongunnon, ‘we or they began *), in the 
other two of the infinitive. In qceras, ‘acres, and 
enihtas, ‘knights,’ though we have saved the final s of 
the plural ending, it no longer makes an additional 
syllable. And in sdthlice, ‘soothly’ (1. e. * truly, ver- 
ily’), there is a yet more marked abbreviation, to which 
we shall presently return. 

On the other hand, ear, ‘ears, and fdr, ‘fared,’ 
have been extended in modern time’by the addition of 
other pronounced elements. It was the rule in Anglo- 
Saxon that a neuter noun of one syllable, if of long 
quantity, had no (nom. or accus.) plural ending. With 
us, every noun, of whatever gender or quantity (save 
a few exceptions, of which we need take no account 
here), takes s as its plural sign. As for Jor, the Anglo- 
Saxons conjugated faran, ‘fare, as they did dragan, 
‘draw,’ and said fér, ‘fared, like dréh, ‘ drew’ (com- 
pare the corresponding German fahren fuhr and tra- 
gen trug)—that is to say, faran was to them a verb of 
the “irregular,” or “old,” or “strong” conjugation. 
But for a long time there has existed in English speech 


CHANGES OF MEANING. 39 


a tendency to work over such verbs, abandoning their 
irregularly varying inflection, and reducing them to 
accordance with the more numerous class of the “regu- 
larly” inflected, like love, loved ; and fare is one of the 
many that have undergone this change. The process 
is quite analogous with that which has turned ear into 
ears; that is to say, a prevailing analogy has been 
extended to include cases formerly treated as excep- 
tional. 

In connection with ear comes to light another very 
striking difference between the ancient and modern 
English: the Anglo-Saxon had grammatical gender, 
like the Greek and Latin and German; it regarded ear 
as neuter, but @cer and deg as masculine, and, for in- 
stance, tunge, ‘tongue,’ and ded, ‘ deed,’ as feminine ; 
to us, who have abolished grammatical gender in favor 
of natural sex, all are alike neuter. 

We turn now to consider a few points relative to 
the meaning of the words used. In fér we find a 
marked difference of sense as well as of form. It is 
part of an old Germanic verb meaning ‘go,’ and is 
traceable even back into the earliest Indo-European, as 
the root par, ‘pass’ (Skt. pdraydmi, Gk. mepdo, Lat. 
ex-per-wor) ;, now it is quite obsolete in any such sense 
as this, and rather unusual even in that of ‘ getting on,’ 
‘making progress:’ “it fared ill with him.” Again, 
acer meant in Anglo-Saxon a ‘ cultivated field, as does 
the German acker to the present day; and here, again, 
we have its very ancient correlatives in Sanskrit agra, 
Greek aypds, Latin ager; the restriction of the word 
to signify a field of certain fixed dimensions, taken as 
a unit of measure for fields in general, is something 
quite peculiar and recent. It is analogous with the like 
treatment of vod and foot and grain, and so on, except 

3 


a 


40 CONSERVATIVE AND ALTERATIVE FORCES. 


that in these cases we have saved the old meaning 
while adding the new. 

Among the striking peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon 
passage is its use of the words Helend, ‘ healing one,’ 
reste-dieg, ‘rest-day,’ and leorning-cnihtas, ‘ learning- 
knights’ (i. e. ‘ youths under instruction’), in the sense 
respectively of ‘Savior, ‘sabbath, and ‘ disciples.’ 
Though all composed of genuine old Germanic mate- 
rials, they were nevertheless recent additions to the 
language. The introduction of Christianity had cre- 
ated a necessity for them. For the new idea of the 
Christian Creator and Father, the old word god, en- 
nobled and inspired with a new meaning, answered 
English purposes well enough. But there was no cur- 
rent name applicable to the conception of one who 
saved men from. their sins, making them whole or hale ; 
and so the present participle of the verb Aalan, ‘make 
hale, heal,’ was chosen to represent cw7yp, and special- 
ized into a proper name, a title for the one Savior. It 
is the same word which, in German, is still current as 
Heiland. Reste-dwg, as name for the sabbath, needs 
no word of explanation or comment. As for leorning- 
cnihtas, rendering discipuli and payral, its most 
striking characteristic, apart from its rather lumbering 
awkwardness, is the peculiar meaning which it implies 
in entht, ‘knight. Between our knight, a word of 
high chivalric significance, and the German knecht, 
‘servant, menial,’ is a long distance: both show a de- 
viation, the one in an upward and the other in a down- 
ward direction, from the indifferent ‘youth, fellow,’ 
which lies at the bottom of the use of the word in our 
Anglo-Saxon compound. 

But a not less noteworthy point in the history of 
these words is that in our later usage they have all be- 


a ss sees, o> 


- MAKING OF FORMS. At 


come superseded by other terms, of foreign origin. 
The Anglo-Saxon did not, like our English, resort free- 
ly to foreign stores of expression for the supply of new 
needs. It was easier then to accept the new institu- 
tions of Christianity than new names for them. We 
have wonderfully changed all that, under the operation 
of causes which will come up for notice hereafter 
(chapter vii.); and in place of the three new Saxon 
names we have put other yet newer ones: two Latin- 
French, disciple and savior, and one Hebrew, sabbath. 
The substitution exemplifies a capital trait in English 
language-history. 

Our attention being thus directed to the introduc- 
tion of new elements into Anglo-Saxon, we will note 
another case or two of the same kind of linguistic 
change in another department. Sdéthlice is an adverb, 
answering to our ‘truly.’ We recognize in the first 
part of it our sooth, a word now almost obsolete—quite 
so, as far as ordinary use is concerned. Its second part, 
lice, is our ly. But it is also a case-form (instrumental) 
of an adjective Uc, our like, which was appended to the 
noun sdth, ‘truth, forming a compound adjective (or 
adjectival derivative) equivalent to truth-like, and com- 
pletely analogous to truthful, from truth and Full. 
Our adverbial ending 7y, then, by which most of our 
adverbs are made, and which to us is only a suffix, is 
really the product of alteration of a case-form of a 
compounded adjective, a word originally independent. . 
Instead of using, like the modern German, the base or 
crude-form of an adjective as adverb—that is to say, in 
the formal grammatical character of adaptedness to 
qualify a verb or adjective rather than a substantive 
—we have wrought out for that purpose a special form, 
of which the history of development may be followed 


42 CONSERVATIVE AND ALTERATIVE FORCES. 


step by step to its origin, and which is exclusively the. 


property of our language among its kindred Germanic 
dialects. 

A second case is brought before us in hyngrede. 
Its preterit ending de is not, like the adverbial ly, ex- 
clusively English; it is rather, like the adjective lic, a 
common Germanic possession. Without dwelling here 
at length upon its history, we will only observe that it 
is, like Vice, traced back to an independent word, the 
preterit did, which was in remote Germanic time added 
to some verbal derivative, or other part of speech, to 
form a new style of past tense, when the yet older pro- 
cesses of preterit formation had become no longer man- 
ageable. 

There are also changes of construction in our pas- 
sage which ought not to pass without a moment’s no- 
tice. The word leorning-cnihtas is object, not subject, 
of Ayngrede ; and the construction is that peculiar one 
in which the impersonal verb, without expressed sub- 
ject, takes before it as object the person affected by the 
action or feeling it signifies. This is still a familiar 
mode of expression in German, where one freely says 
mich hungerte, ‘me hungered, for ‘I hungered ;’ and 
even we have a trace of it, in the obsolescent methinks, 
German mich diinkt—that is, ‘it seems to me.’ Again, 
the infinitives pluccian and etan, being by origin ver- 
bal nouns and having properly the construction of 
nouns, are directly dependent, as objects, on the tran- 
sitive verb ongunnon. We make the same construc- 
tion with some verbs: so, he will pluck, he must eat, 


see him pluck, let him eat ; and even after began short- | 


ened to ’gan it is allowed ;* but in the vast majority of 
cases we require the preposition ¢o as “infinitive sign,” 


1 “ Around ’gan Marmion wildly stare.”—W. Scort. 


a: 


CHANGES OF CONSTRUCTION. 43 


saying “ began zo pluck and éo eat.” This preposition 
was not unknown in Anglo-Saxon; but it was used 
only where the connection pretty manifestly favored 
the insertion of such a connective; and the infinitive 
after it had a peculiar form: thus, géd to etanne, ‘ good 
unto eating,’ and so ‘ good to eat.’ The ¢o which at 
the period of our specimen-passage was a real word of 
relation has now become the stereotyped sign of a cer- 
tain verbal form; it has no more independent value 
than the ending an of pluccian and etan—which, in- 
deed, it in a manner replaces; though not, like -ly and 
-d, combined with the word to which it belongs, its of: 
fice is analogous with theirs. 

We will notice but one thing more in the passage : 
the almost oblivion into which sé¢h, our sooth, has fall- 
en. Only a small part of the great body of English- 
speakers know that there is such a word; and no one 
but a poet, or an imitator of archaic siples ever uses it. 
We have put in place of it true and truth, which of old 
were more restricted to the expression of faithfulness, 
trustworthiness. 

The brief sentence selected, we see, illustrates a 
very considerable variety of linguistic changes; in fact, 
there is hardly a possible mode of change which is not 
more or less distinctly brought to light by it. Such 
are, in general, the ways in which a language comes to 
be at a later period different from what it has been at 
an earlier. They are matters of individual detail ; each 
item, or each class of accordant items, has its own time 
and occasion, and analogies, and secondary causes, and 
consequences} it is ae sum and collective effect which 
make up the growth of language. If we are to under- 
stand how language grows, we must take them up and 
examine them in their individuality. This, then, is the 


44 CONSERVATIVE AND ALTERATIVE FORCES. 


subject which is now for some time to occupy us: an 
inquiry into the modes of linguistic change, and their 
causes, nearer and remoter. 

We have already rudely made one classification of 
these linguistic changes, founded on the various pur- 
pose which they subserve: namely, into such as make 
new expression, being produced for the designation of 
conceptions before undesignated ; and such as merely 
alter the form of old expression ; or, into additions and 
alterations. It will, however, suit our purpose better 
to make a more external division, one depending upon 
the kind of change rather than upon its object. In 
carrying this out, it will be practicable to take every- 
where sufficient notice of the object also. 

We may distinguish, then :— 

I. Alterations of the old material of language ; 
change of the words which are still retained as the sub- 
stance of expression; and this of two kinds or sub- 
classes: 1. change in uttered form; 2. change in con- 
tent or signification; the two, as we shall see, occurring 
either independently or in conjunction. | 

II. Losses of the old material of language, disap- 
pearance of what has been in use; and this also of two 
kinds: 1. loss of complete words; 2. loss of gram- 
matical forms and distinctions. 

III. Production of new material; additions to the 
old stock of a Janguage, in the way of new words or 
new forms; external expansion of the resources of ex- 
pression. 

This classification is obviously exhaustive; there 
can be no change in any language which will not fall 
under one or other of the three classes here laid down. 


CHAPTER IV. 


GROWTH OF LANGUAGE: CHANGE IN THE OUTER FORM OF 
WORDS. 


Relation of the word to the conception it designates, as conditioning the 
possibility, and the mutual independence, of its changes of form and 
meaning. Tendency to ease or economy in changes of form. Ab- 
breviation of words; examples; its agency in form-making ; loss 
of endings. Substitution of one sound for another; examples of 
vowel and consonant change; Grimm’s law; underlying causes of 
phonetic change ; processes of utterance; physical or natural scheme 
of spoken alphabet; its series and classes; distinction of vowel and 
consonant; syllabic or articulate character of human speech. Gen- 
eral tendencies in phonetic change. Limits to phonetic explanation. 
Change of form by extension of a prevailing analogy. 


In this chapter we have to take up and illustrate 
the first division of the first class of linguistic changes, 
that which includes alterations of the uttered and au- 
dible forms of words. But first it will be well to call 
attention anew to certain general principles (already 
hinted at in the second chapter), which are of funda- 
mental importance as underlying the whole subject of 
verbal alteration, whether in respect to shape or sense. 
And we shall best attain our object by discussing a 
selected example. 3 

Let us take a familiar word, found in most of the 
languages of modern Europe, and having a well-known 
history—the word bishop. It comes, as almost every 


46 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


one is aware, from the Greek ésicxo7ros (episkopos). 
This, again, is a derivative from the root skep, ‘sce, 
look,’ with the prefix epz, ‘at;’ and so it means by ori- 
gin simply ‘ inspector, overseer ;’ in the early formative 
period of the Christian church, it was selected as offi- 
cial designation of the person to whom was committed 
the oversight of the affairs of a little Christian com- 
munity : and both word and office are still readily rec- 
ognizable in our bishop and its use. But we have cut 
down the long title mto a briefer one, by dropping its 
first and last syllables: and we have worked over into 
new shape most of its constituent sounds: we have 
changed the first p into a different but closely kindred 
sound, its corresponding sonant, b; the sk, a sibilant 
with following palatal mute, has been as it were fused 
together into the more palatal sibilant, sh, a simple 
sound, though it is written with two letters, just be- 
cause of its usual derivation by fusion of two simple 
sounds into one; and the o-sound of the second sylla- 
ble has been neutralized into what we usually call the 
“short w” sound—and the result is our word, with two 
syllables instead of four, and with five sounds instead 
of nine, and among those five only two, the consonant 
p and the vowel 7, which were of the nine. The Ger- 
man, in its béschof, has altered even the final p. The 
French, again, has made out of the same original a 
very different looking product, évégue, which does not 
contain a single sound that is found either in the Eng- 
lish word or in the German ; it comes, by another set 
of changes, from evesc, for episk. In Spanish, the word 
is made into obéspo, by yet another process, and this is 
further shortened in the Portuguese dispo. The Dan- 
- ish, finally, shows the extreme of abbreviation, in the 
monosyllable disp. While these changes have been 


THE WORD SISHOP. AY 


going on, the meaning of the word has been not less 
altered. The official who was, when first named, mere- 
ly overseer of the interests of a little band of timid 
proselytes to a new and proscribed faith, half-expectant 
martyrs, has risen immensely in dignity and power, 
along with the rise of the religion to importance, and 
to preéminence in the state; he has become a conse- 
crated prelate, charged with spiritual and temporal 
authority through an entire province—a kind of eccle- 
siastical prince, yet still wearing his old simple title. 

From this word, taken as a type, we may learn 
many things, which a wider induction, from innumer- 
able examples, would only confirm. 

First, the name had its origin in a need which arose 
at a particular time and place in the progress of human 
history. A new religion came into being, and required 
organization of its votaries; and this made a call for 
technical designations of its officials—which, as in all 
similar cases, were then without difficulty found: not 
bishop only, but priest and deacon, and so on. The 
words were, in fact, already in existence, as general 
terms, ready, like the people who should wear them, to 
be selected and set apart to this specific office. What 
should come of it further, whether the new titles should 
rise to importance and attain wide currency, depended 
on the after-fate of the system to which they be- | 
longed. 

Again, the word dzshop did not describe, either fully 
or accurately, the office which it was used to designate. 
Mere ‘looking on’ or ‘looking over’ was not what 
men expected of the person elected ; the barest hint of 
his official duty is contained in the term. But, imper- 
fect as it may have been as a description, it was sufli- 
cient as a designation. The description would have 


48 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


needed to be a long one, and varied to suit the cir- 
cumstances of each new place and time; the title 
answered its desired purpose equally well in all cir- 
cumstances. 

Hence also, as little did the retention of the title 
depend upon the maintenance of just that kind and de- 
gree of relation between its etymological meaning and 
the office it denominated which had existed at the out- 
set. Even what etymological appropriateness it once 
possessed was no longer of any account, when once it 
had become established in use as name of the office. 
It passed, with the institution to which it belonged, 
into the keeping and use of great communities which 
did not speak Greek and had no knowledge of what it 
originally signified, and it served its purpose with them 
just as well as if they had understood its whole history. 
From the moment when it became an accepted sign for 
a certain thing, its whole career was cut loose from its 
primitive root; it became, what it has ever since con- 
tinued to be, a conventional sign, and hence an alter- 
able sign, for a certain conception, but a variable and 
developing conception. 

In this fundamental fact, that the uttered sign was 
a conventional one, bound to the conception signified 
by it only by a tie of mental association, lay the possi- 
bility both of its change of meaning and of its change 
of form. If the tie were a natural, an internal and 
necessary one, it would seem to follow that any change 
in either would have to be accompanied by a change in 
the other. But in the case taken, while the idea has 
expanded into greatness, the word has been shrinking 
in its proportions, and is nowhere more than a frag- 
ment of its former self. The only tendency which we 
can discover in its treatment is a tendency toward 


CHANGE OF FORM AND MEANING. 49 


economy of effort in its utterance; it has been reshaped 
to suit better the convenience of those who used -it. 
In the forms which it has assumed, we can plainly trace 
the influence of national habits. The Germanic races 
accent prevailingly the first syllable of their words ; 
they have, then, while retaining the old accented syl- 
lable with its accent, cast off the one that preceded it. 
The French, on the other hand, accents its final sylla- 
ble (which is regularly the Latin accented syllable) ; it, 
accordingly, drops all that followed the accented -pisk-, 
but retains the initial syllable which the others re- 
jected. And the other various alterations of form 
which the word has undergone may be paralleled with 
classes of similar alterations in other words of the same 
language; all apparently made to humor the ease of 
the speakers. 

In treating separately, therefore, the subjects of 
change of form and change of meaning in words, we 
are not parting two necessarily connected and mutually 
dependent processes, but only recognizing a natural 
independence. A word may change its form, to any 
extent, without change of meaning; it may take on an 
entirely new meaning without change of form. As a 
matter of fact, the words are few or none which have 
not done both; and, in taking up either, we shall have 
to use examples which illustrate the other as well. All 
the material of language exhibits more or less the 
working of all the processes of growth; but it will not 


‘be hard to direct our attention, exclusively or espe- 


cially, now to the one and now to the other of them. 
And, as regards change of form, we have to recog- 
nize, as the grand tendency underlying all the innu- 
merable and apparently heterogeneous facts which it 
embraces, the disposition, or at least the readiness, to 


50 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


give up such parts of words as can be spared without 
Geir ert to the sense, and so to work over what is 
left that it shall be more manageable by its users, more 
agreeable to their habits and preferences. The science 
te language has not succeeded in bringing to light any 
more fandathental law than this, even any other to put 
alongside of it; it is the grand current setting through 
universal fasedaee: and moving all its niltetials in a 
given direction—although, like “pbher such currents, it 
has its eddies, where a counter-movement on a small 
scale may seem to prevail. It is another manifestation 
of the same tendency which leads men to use abbre- 
viations in writing, to take a short cut instead of going 
around by the aatal road, and other like tne a 
which there is no harm, unless more is lost than aceam 
by the would-be economy: then, indeed, it becomes 
rather laziness than economy. Its operation, as mani- 
fested in language, is of both kinds, true economy and 
lazy wastefulness ; for it works on with blind absence 
of forethought, heedless, in part, of bs results to 
which it leads. 

The character of the tendency is seen most clearly 
in the abbreviation of words; obviously, nothing else 
is needed to explain the gradual reduction of form 
which has ever been going on in the constituents of 
every language. We noticed above (p. 38) sundry ex- 
amples of innocent abbreviation made by us in the 
words of our specimen-passage : the most striking was 
our knights (i. e. naits) for enthtas, a loss of two. pro- 
nounced elements besides the shortening by a syllable. 
It is easy to perceive in all these cases the tendency to 
ease at work; and we appreciate in the last the com- 
parative Bacicelin of uttering a &-sound before an 7: 
the class of words in which we have dropped it off is 


WEARING OUT OF ENDINGS. 51 


not a small one (e. g. knife and knit, gnaw and gnarl). 
And the German ch-sound (of zch, ete.) belonging to the 
h of entht, itself coming .by phonetic change from an 
earlier 4, is one which English organs have taken a dis- 
taste to, and have refused longer to produce. _Some- 
times they have left it out altogether (with compensa- 
tory prolongation of the preceding vowel), as in the 
word before us; sometimes they have changed it into 
J, as in draught and laugh. In ongunnon, ‘ begun,’ 
however, and in plucctan and etan, ‘pluck’ and ‘ eat,’ 
we have instances of that kind of loss which is akin to 
wastefulness; for the lost final syllables are those which 
showed the grammatical form of the words, being plu- 
ral ending and infinitive ending. Regrettable as they 
may be, the history of our language, and of the others 
related with it, has been from the beginning marked 
with such losses, whereby grammatical distinctions have 
been let go, along with the forms on which the speak- 
ers’ consciousness of them depended: To show this 
more fully, we will for a moment follow the history of 
the on, the now lost ending of ongunnon. In the old- 
est form to which it can be traced, it was anti, probably 
the relic of an independent pronoun or pronouns, dis- - 
tinguishing the third person plural in all verbal inflec- 
tion. In the Latin it is shortened to wnt, but still per- 
fectly distinctive. In the oldest Germanic (Mceso- 
Gothic), it is and in the present tense, but in the preterit 
already contracted to wn. The corresponding ending 
in the first person plural was mas?, also of pronominal 
derivation ; this, after pa&sing through such intermedi- 
ate forms as Sanskrit mas, (Doric) Greek pes, Latin 
mus, and Slavonic mi, had become in Gothic am in the 
present, wm in the perfect. In German, we find only 
en in both first and third person, the slight difference of 


52 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


um and un having been obliterated; but the second 
person has ed, different from the ants two; in the An- 
glo-Saxon, this distinction has gone the way of the rest, 
and we have left only a general ending on, separating 
all the plural persons alike from the. ieclic and 
finally, the English has swept away even this remnant 
of a former elaborate system. 

Another example of the earlier effects of the same 
tendency in our passage is fdr, ‘fared, the brevity of 
which, like that of English monosyllables generally, is 
the result of a long succession of abbreviating processes. 
Its earliest traceable form is papdra; but even that 
shows the loss of a personal ending ¢, which it must 
have had at the outset, and which is still represented to 
us in the present tense by the ¢ of German Fahrt, and 
the th or s of our fareth or fares. 

It was pointed out above (p. 41) that in the liee of 
séthlice we have the full case-form of a compounded 
adjective, out of which has been made later the adjec- 
tive and adverbial suffix 77. Here is illustrated another 
department of the action of the abbreviating tendency ; 
its aid is essential to the conversion of what was once 
an independent word into an affix, an appended element 
denoting relation. ‘So long as the word which enters 
into combination with another retains its own shape 
unaltered, the product is a compound only ; but when, 


by phonetic change, its origin and identity with the still _ 


-subsisting independent word are hidden, the compound 
becomes rather a derivative. Phonetic abbreviation has 
made the difference between godly, for example—a 
formed word, containing a radical and a formative ele- 
ment—and godlike, a mere compound. Just so, in Ger- 
man, the adjective suffix ch has become distinct from 
gleich (which has, besides, a prefix); and in that lan- 


ABBREVIATING TENDENCY. 53 


guage gdttlich and gdttergleich stand in the same man- 
ner side by side, the one a derivative and the other a 
compound. At an earlier period of Germanic language- 
history, the same influence helped to convert the com- 
pound hyngre-dide, ‘ hunger-did, into the grammatical 
form Ayngre-de, ‘hunger-ed ;’ and, in vastly more an- 
cient time, to shape over certain pronominal elements 
into the personal endings anti, mast, and ti, spoken of 
above. | 

Thus the tendency to economy, in the very midst of 
its destructive action, is at the same time constructive. 
It begins with producing those very forms which it is 
afterward to mutilate and wear out. Without it, com- 
pound words and ageregated phrases would remain ever 
such. Its influence is always cast in favor of subordi- 
natiny in substance what is subordinate in meaning, of 
integrating and unifying what would otherwise be of 
loose structure—in short, of disguising the derivation 
of linguistic signs, making them signs merely, and signs 
easy to manage. ‘The point is one to which we shall 
have to return in discussing (in the seventh chapter) the 
third great class of linguistic changes, the production 
of new words and forms. 

But while the tendency is everywhere one, the ways 
in which it manifests itself by abbreviation are very 
various, each needing for its explanation a full under- 
standing of the habits of the language in which it ap- 
pears. The Germanic languages are all characterized 
by a pretty strong accentual stress, laid in general on 
the first or radical syllable of their words, derivative or 
inflectional, and on the first members of compounds. 
This mode of accentuation is itself an example of pho- 
netic change; for it belongs to-none of the related lan- 
guages, not even to the Slavonic, generally regarded as 


54 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


nearest of kin with the Germanic. A result of it has 
been that at a later time, and quite independently in 
the different Germanic languages, the endings or sut- 
fixes, of inflection or derivation, have generally lost 
their distinctive vowels, and come to be spoken with 
the more neutral ¢: this change belongs, for example, 
to the transition from Old to Middle High-German, and 
from Anglo-Saxon to Old English. To it is also in 
part due (though also to a more mental willingness to 
abandon distinctions formerly established and main- 
tained) the extensive loss of endings to which these 
languages have been subjected, and which appears most 
of all in our English. In French, the history of change 
has been somewhat different: there has been no gen- 
eral shift of the place of the accent as compared with 
Latin ; but there has been a wholesale abbreviation and 
loss of whatever in Latin followed the accented sylla- 


ble, which has accordingly become (leaving out of ac- . 


count the mute ¢) the final one of every regular French 
word: so peuple from pépulum, faire from facere, 
prendre from prehéndere, été from both ewstdtem and 


stétum. This last example—été from statwm—draws | 


aside our attention for a moment to a class of altera- 
tions which, by a curious turn, end in the extension of 
a word’s syllabic form. To the Gallic peoples who 
adopted Latin speech, the utterance of an s before a 
mute—k, t, or p—seemed a difficulty which should be 
avoided: just as to us, later, the utterance of a g or k 
before n (in gnaw, knife, etc.). But, instead of drop- 
ping the trying letter, they at first prefixed a vowel to 
it, to make it more manageable, producing such words 
as escape (Lat. scapus), esprit (spiritus), estomac (sto- 
machus). And then, by an actual abbreviation, and a 
common one, the sibilant has in later times been usu- 


——_— = as 


‘SILENT LETTERS. 55 


ally dropped out, and a large class of words like école 
(schola), épous (sponsus), and étude (studium), is left in 
the French vocabulary. Another consequence of the 
same difference of accent is the greater mutilation of 
the radical part of the word in the Romanic languages 
(especially French) than in the Germanic; and many of 
its results have passed into English: thus, preach (Fr. 
précher) from predicare, cost (Fr. cotter) from constare, 
count (i'r. compter) from computare, blame (Fr. blémer) 
from blasfemare (Gr. Bracdnueiv). Words, however, 
like such and which (A.-S. swyle and hwyle, Scotch 
whik, Germ. solch and welch), from so-like and who- 
like, show plainly that this disguising fusion of two 
parts of a word is by no means limited to the French 
part of English. 

One conspicuous result of these processes is the 
presence of numberless “ silent letters” in the written 
forms of languages like French and English, in which 
the omission of sounds formerly uttered has been go- 
ing on during the period of record by writing. Such 
letters are relics of modes of utterance formerly preva- 
lent. 

This must suffice by way of illustration of the ten- 
dency to ease as manifested in abbreviation. But the 
other mode of its action, consisting in the alteration of 
the retained elements of words, the substitution of one 
sound for another, is quite as extensive, and much more 
intricate and difficult. We have already noted exam- 
ples of it: the abbreviated piskop, we saw, has been 
mouthed over into bishop; and we reviewed above (p. 
37) some of the principal differences which separate 
our yowel-utterance from that of the Anglo-Saxon. 
The consistency of our vowel-system, especially, has 
been completely broken up by these changes, the per- 


56 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


vading nature of which is attested by the strange names 
we give to our vowel-sounds. ‘The original and proper 
sound of a is that in far, father: what we call “long 
a” (fate) is really long é, the nearest correspondent in 
quality to the “ short e” of met, which we continue to 
call by its right name because we have not generally al- 
tered its ancient sound; our “short a” (fat) is a new 
tone, intermediate between a (far) and e (fate), and 
none of our letters was devised for its representation. 
In like manner, our “long ¢” (mete) is really a long 2, 
and what we call “long 7” (pine) is a diphthong, az. 
And, on the other side, our “long «” (pure) is not 
even a diphthong, but a syllable, 7w, composed of semi- 
vowel and vowel, and our “short 0” (not) and “ short 
uw” (but) are new sounds, having nothing to do with 
“Jong o” and “long wu,” and, of course, possessing no 
hereditary and rightful representatives in our alphabet. 
It is somewhat as if we were to call our elms “ tall li- 
lacs,” and our rose-bushes “short maples.” ‘That our 
written vowels have from three to nine values each, is 
owing to the fact that we have altered their original 
unitary sounds in so many different. ways during the 
historic period ; and there lies yet further back another 
like history of change. This kind of change has been 
carried on upon a larger scale in English than in almost 
any other known language; but its effects are found 
abundantly in every other: the I'rench, for example, 
has given to the old Latin uw a mixed 2 and w sound (the 
German 7%), and has converted the old diphthong ow 
into an w(oo)-sound (being curiously paralleled in both 
respects by the ancient Greek); it has taken a strange 
fancy for the diphthongal 07 (nearly equal to our wa of 
was), and substitutes it for all manner of ancient sounds: 
as in mov for mé, crots for credo, mois for mensis, quot 


CONSONANT CHANGES. - 57 


for guid, for for fides, loi for legem, noir for nigrum, 
nove for nucem ; and so on. 

_ The vowels are much more liable to wholesale alter- 
ation than are the consonants, and in our specimen-pas- 
sage the indications of consonantal change are rather 
scanty. Ofer, however, has become over with us, by 
the conversion of a surd into its corresponding sonant 
sound, a phenomenon of very wide range and great 
frequency in language ; and the same change has passed 
upon the final s of his and aceras, making of it a 2, 
though without change of spelling. But if we look 
further away, among the tongues kindred with ours, we 
shall discover signs in plenty of consonantal mutation. 
Deg is in German tag, with ¢ for d, and hyngrede is 
hangerte ; and if we were to go through the whole vo- 
cabulary of the two languages, we should find this the 
prevailing relation, and be led to set up the “law” that 
English d@ and German ¢ correspond to one another. 
Again, etan is essen in German, with an s-sound for ¢: 
and this, too, is a constant relation; nor is it otherwise 
with id, which is German die, with d for th. But etan 
and essen answer to Latin edere, Greek &éw, Sanskrit 
ad; and thé and die are the two regular Germanic 
forms of the old pronominal root ta (Gr. To, ete., Skt. 
tad, ete.): and these, too, are general facts; insomuch 
that comparative grammarians are led to set up the 
“law” that a ¢-sound, as found in most of the languages 
of our family, is regularly a ¢h in part of the Germanic 
dialects and a d@ in others; that a d-sound, in like man- 
ner, is a ¢ or ans; and that to English d and German ¢ 
an aspirate, ti or dh, corresponds in Greek and San- 
skrit.. This is, indeed, the famous “Grimm’s Law,” of 
the permutation or rotation of mutes in Germanic 
speech. It is only an example—to be sure, an unusu- 


58 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


ally curious and striking example—of what is univer- 
sally true between related languages: their sounds, in 
corresponding words, are by no means always the same; 
they are diverse, rather, but diverse by a constant dif- 
ference; there exists between them a fixed relation, 
though it is not one of identity. Hence, in the com- 
parison of two languages, a first point to which atten- 
tion has to be directed is this: what sounds in the one, 
vowel or consonantal, correspond to what sounds in the 
other. This condition of things is only a necessary re- 
sult of the fact, already noted, that the mode of pro- 
nunciation of every language is all the time undergoing 
a change: a change now more and now less important 
and pervading, but never entirely intermitted ; and that 
‘no two languages change after precisely the same fash- 
ion. In presence of such a phenomenon as that last in- 
stanced, the student of language has to inquire which 
(if any) of the sounds, ¢, d, th, dh, s is in any given 
case the original, through what steps of successive 
change each varying result has been reached, and, if 
within his reach, what cause has governed the course of 
mutation. 

And, heterogeneous as the facts may at first sight 
appear, the student soon finds that they are very far 
from being a mere confusion of lawless changes; they 
have their own methods and rules. One sound passes 
into another that is physically akin with it: that is to 
say, that is produced by the same organs, or otherwise 
in a somewhat similar manner; and the movement of 
transition follows a general direction, or else is governed 
by specific causes. This has caused the processes of 
articulation to be profoundly studied, as part of the 
science of language. And such is the interest and im- 
portance of the study that we cannot avoid dwelling 


. ‘ 
P 
. 7 ) ae 
Pn ee ee ee 


FORMATION OF ARTICULATE SOUNDS. 59 


upon it here a little: not long enough, indeed, to pene- 
trate to its depths, but at least until we are able to gain 
some idea of our spoken alphabet as of an orderly sys- 
tem of sounds, and of the lines and degrees of relation- 
ship which bind its members together, and help to de- 
termine their transitions. 

The organs by which alphabetic sounds are produced 
are the lungs, the larynx, and the parts of the mouth 
above the larynx. The lungs are, as it were, the bel- 
lows of the organ; they simply produce a current of 
air, passing out through the throat, and varying in ra- 
pidity or force according to the requirements of the 
speaker. The larynx is a kind of box at the upper end 
of the windpipe, and contains what is equivalent to the 
reed of the organ-pipe, with the muscular apparatus for 
its adjustment. From the sides of the box, namely, 
spring forth a pair of half-valves, of which the mem- 
branous edges, the “ vocal chords,” are capable of being 
brought close together in the middle of the passage, 
and made tense, so that the passing current of air sets 
them in vibration; and this vibration, communicated to 
the air, is reported to our ears as sound. In ordinary 
breathing, the valves are relaxed and retracted, leaving 
a wide and rudely triangular opening for the passage 
of the air. Thus the larynx gives the element of tone, 
accompanied with variety of pitch: and how important 
a part of speaking this latter is, only they can fully re- 
-alize who have heard the performance of an automatic 
speaking-machine, with its dreadful monotone. Above 
the vibrating reed-apparatus is set, after the fashion of 
a sounding-box, the cavity of the pharynx, with that of 
the mouth, and the nasal passage; and movements of 
the throat and mouth-organs under voluntary control so 
alter the shape and size of this box as to give to the 


60 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


tone produced a variety of characters, or to modify it 
into a variety of tones—which are the sounds of our 
spoken alphabet. A concise description of voice, then, 
is this: it is the audible result of a column of air emit- 


ted by the lungs, impressed with sonancy and variety 


of pitch by the larynx, and individualized by the mouth- 
* organs. 

To describe in detail the construction of the vocal 
apparatus, and the movements of the muscles and car- 
tilages and membranes which cause and modify the 
vibrations, belongs to physiology; to determine the 
form and composition of the vibrations which produce 
the audible variety of effects upon the ear, belongs to 
acoustics: the part of phonetics, as a branch of linguis- 
tic science, is to follow and describe, as closely as may 
be, the voluntary changes of position of the mouth-or- 
_ gans, ete., which determine the various sounds. These 
are in part easy of observation, in part much more dif- 
ficult ; but the main points, nearly all that we need to 
take account of here, are within the reach of careful 
and continued self-observation. And no one can claim 
to have any proper understanding of phonetic ques- 
tions, unless he has so studied that he fairly follows and 
understands the movements that go on in his own 
mouth in speaking, and can arrange his spoken alpha- 
bet into a systematic and consistent scheme. Such a 


scheme, for the ordinary sounds composing the English | 


alphabet, we will attempt here to set up. 

Every alphabetic system must start from the sound 
a (of far, father); for this is the fundamental tone of 
the human voice, the purest intonated product of lungs 
and throat; if we open the mouth and fauces to their 
widest, getting out of the way everything that should 
modify the issuing current, this is the sound that is 


nS lama 


. 
: 
a 
x 
{ 
; 


ARRANGEMENT OF THE ALPHABET. 61 


heard. Upon this openest tone various modifications 
are produced by narrowing the oral cavity, at different 
points and to different degrees. The less marked modi- 
fications, which, though they alter decidedly the quality 
of the tone, yet leave predominant the element of tone, 
of material, give rise to the sounds which we call vow- 
els. But the cavity may be so narrowed, at one and 
another point, that the friction of the breath, as driven 
out through the aperture, forms the conspicuous ele- 
ment in the audible product; this, then, is a sound of 
very different character, a fricative consonant. And 
the narrowing of the organs may be pushed even to 
the point of complete closure, the element of form, of 
oral modification, coming thus to prevail completely 
over that of material, of tone: the product, in that case, 
is made distinctly audible only as the contact is broken; 
and we call it a mute. 

This brief statement suggests the plan on which the 
systematic arrangement of every human alphabet is to 
be made. It must lie between the completely open a 
(far) and the completely close mutes; these are its 
natural and necessary limits; and it may be expected 
to fall into classes according to the intermediate de- 
grees of closure. But there are also other lines of 
relationship in it. Theoretically, an indefinite num- 
ber of mute-closures are possible, all along the mouth, 
from the lips to as far back in the throat as the organs 
can be brought together; in practice, however, they 
are found to be prevailingly three: one in the front, 
made by lip against lip, the labial closure, giving p; 
one in the back of the mouth, made against the soft 
palate by the rear upper surface of the tongue, the 
palatal (or guttural) closure, giving. % ; and one inter- 
mediate between the other two, made by the point or 


62 CIANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


front of the tongue against the roof of the mouth near 
the front teeth, the lingual (or dental) closure, giving 7. 
These are the only mute-closures found in English, or 
French, or German; or even in the majority of tongues 
in the world. And the same tendency toward a triple 
classification, of front, back, and intermediate, appears 
also in the other classes of sounds, so that these arrange 
themselves, in the main, nearly upon the lines of gradual 
closure proceeding from the neutrally open @ (far) to 
the shut p, ¢,%. This adds, then, the other element 
which is needed in order to convert the mass of articu- 
late utterances into an orderly system. We have below 
the English alphabet arranged upon the plan described, 
and will go on to consider it in more detail. 


a 
@ at vowels. 
sonant. 4 ) G 
4 U 
Yy t, Z Wh) semivowels. 
ae N m  nasals. | 
surd. A aspiration. 
fe) 
sonant, 2h e stants > | 8 
surd. sh 8 e}§8 
z| 8 
’ a 
sonant. dh )) spirants. & a 
surd. tl 
sonant, g d b t mutes. 
surd. k t p 
palatal lingual labial 
series. series. series. 


Along with 4, ¢, p, in the first place, go their near- 
est kindred, g, d, 6. These are their sonant (or vocal, 
phthongal, intonated) counterparts. In the former, 
namely, there is no audible utterance, but complete 


SURD AND SONANT SOUNDS. 63 


silence, during the continuance of the closure ; the anti- 
thesis to a is absolute; the explosion is their whole sen- 
sible substance. In the latter there is, even while the 
closure lasts, a tone produced by the vibration of the 
vocal chords, a stream of air sufficient to support vibra- 
tion for a very brief time being forced up from the 
lungs into the closed cavity or receiving-box of the 
pharynx and mouth. This is the fundamental distinc- 
tion of “surd” and “sonant” sounds; anything else is 
merely a consequence of this and subordinate to it; the 
names strong and weak, hard and soft, sharp and flat, 
and so on, founded (with more or less of misapprehen- 
sion added) upon these subordinate characteristics, are 
to be rejected. The difference between pa and ba, 
then, is that the sonant utterance begins in the former 
just when the contact is broken, and in the latter just 
before; in ad, it continues a moment after the contact 
is made; in aba, it is uninterrupted and continuous: 
and so also with d and g. 

But there is a third product of the same three posi- 
tions of mute-closure. By dropping, namely, the veil 
of the palate, which in ordinary utterance closes the 
passage from the pharynx into the nose, the intonated 
current of 6, d, g is allowed entrance to the nose and 
exit there: and the result is the class of nasals (or “ res- 
onants”), m,n, and ng (as in singing). Here, though 
there is closure of the mouth-organs, the tone is so 
sonorous and continuable that the breach of contact, or 
explosion, is reduced to a very subordinate value, and 
the class belongs high up in the alphabet, toward the 
vowels. 

As a general rule (exceptions to it are not com- 
mon), any language that has either of these three prod- 


ucts of a given mute-closure will have also the other 
4 


64 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


two: thus, the presence of a p in the alphabet implies 
also that of a 6 and an m, and so on. 

In the older tongues of our family, and even in 
some modern ones, both of our own and of other fami- 
lics, there are fourth and fifth products of the same 
articulating positions, made by letting slip a bit of 
breath or flatus, a brief h, after the simple mute; turn- 
ing a por b into a ph or DA (pronounced as written), 
and soon. These are called aspirate mutes, or, briefly, 
aspirates. 

Next to the mutes in regard to degree of closure 
are the class of so-called “fricatives,” defined above as 
containing a rustling or friction of the breath through 
a narrowed aperture as their main element. If the 
lips are brought together in loose instead of close con- 
tact, and the breath forced out between them, there is 
heard an f-sound; or, if the breath be intonated, a v- 
sound. These, however, are not precisely our English 
or French (nor the general German) f and v; for, in 
the latter, the tips of the teeth are brought forward 
and laid upon the lower lip, and the expulsion is made 
between them; giving a product somewhat differently 
shaded, a dentilabial instead of a purely labial sound, 
A relaxation of the lingual contact, in like manner, 
gives the s and z sounds; and that of the palatal gives 
the German ch (its sonant counterpart is very rare). 
Practically, however, it is found convenient to divide 
the fricatives into two sub-classes: s and z have a pe- 
culiar quality which we call sibilant or hissing; and the 
same is shared by the sh and the 2A (in azure, vision) 
sounds, which are produced farther back upon the 
roof of the mouth, or in a more palatal position. 
These two pairs, accordingly, we set by themselves, 
as lingual and palatal “sibilants.” Then, along with 


_ VOWEL AND CONSONANT SERIES. 65 


the f and v, as akin with them, especially in their 
dentilabial variety, we have the two English th-sounds, 
surd in thin and sonant in then (written dh in the 
scheme), real dentilinguals, produced between the 
tongue and teeth. These four, with the (German) 
ch-sound, we class as “spirants.” Historically, they 
have a special kinship in that they are all alike fre- 
quent products of the alteration of an aspirate mute; 
hence it is that they are so often, in various languages, 
written with ph, th, ch (=kA). | 

A like tendency to the points of oral action already 
defined appears in the vowels, the opener tone-sounds. 
An 7 (in pique, pick) is a palatal vowel, made by an 
approach of the flat of the tongue toward the palate 
where its contact producesak,; an wu (rile, pill) in- 
volves a rounding approach of the lips, the organs 
whose contact makes a p (although not without accom- 
panying action at the base of the tongue also). And 
between a (far) and z stands e (thay, thén), made by a 
less degree of palatal approach, as o (ndte, Obey) be- 
tween @ and w. And again, the sound of Jat, man 
(@ in the scheme) stands between a and é, as that of 
all, what (A in the scheme) between a’ and o. Repre- 
senting for the moment the pure fricatives by £A and 
ph, we have the palatal series a w ¢ ¢ kh k, and the 
tabial series @ 4 0 w ph p, which are true series all the 
way through, made by gradually increasing degrees of 
approximation of the same parts of the mouth until 
complete closure is reached. 

There is still one class to be noticed: that of the 
semivowels, or sounds which stand nearly on the divis- 
ion-line between vowel and consonant. J (pique) and 
w (rule) are the closest sounds we can make with reten- 
tion of the predominant tone-quality which constitutes 


66 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


avowel. But so close are they, that it is only necessary 
to abbreviate them sufficiently, making them merely 
starting-points from which to reach another vowel- 
sound, in order to convert them into consonants, y and 
w,; these differ, at the utmost, only infinitesimally in 
articulating position from? and wv. And with them be- 
long the 7 and J, lingual semivowels, used in many lan- 
guages also as vowels; the 7, even in English, in able, 


eagle, ete. The 7 is produced between the tongue-tip _ 


and the roof of the mouth, and is so generally trilled or 
vibrated that trilling is apt to be given as its distinc- 
tive characteristic; the Z sets the tip of the tongue 
against the roof of the mouth, but leaves the sides 
open for the free escape of the intonated breath. 

We have one more pair of simple vowels, that in 
hiwt and hit (a in the scheme), the specific quality of 
which is due to a dimming action along the whole 
mouth rather than an approach at a definite point or 
points, and which are thus a duller kind of a; they 
are put in the centre of the vowel-triangle rather be- 
cause they belong nowhere else than because they 
belong precisely there. 

The distinctions of long and short vowel, although 
in English they always involve differences of quality 
as well as of quantity, and the three compound vowel- 
sounds or diphthongs, az (“long 7” of aisle, asle), au 
(out, how), and Az (oil, boy), are for simplicity’s sake 
left unnoticed in the scheme. And it remains only 
to find a place in it, and a definition, for the somewhat 
anomalous #. We have seen that in the classes of 
mutes and fricatives the sounds go in pairs, one pro- 
duced by mere breath, the other by intonated breath, 
forced through the same position of the organs; while 
this is not the case with the remaining and opener 


She i i gS, en a lll 


THE ALPHABETIC SCHEME. 67 


classes of sounds. We may define the difference in a 
general way thus: after a certain degree of closeness is 
reached, simple breath is sutliciently characterized to 
give a constituent to the alphabet for every articulat- 
ing position; short of that degree, only tone is fully 
distinctive; surd breath, though somewhat differen- 
tiated in the several positions, is not enough so to 
furnish a separate alphabetic element in each; the 
various breaths count only as one letter—namely, the 
h. The Ah, the pure aspiration, is an expulsion of flatus 
through the position of the adjacent letter, whether 
vowel, semivowel, or nasal; in English, it occurs only 
before a vowel, or before w and Y, in such words as 
when and hue. It is, then, the common surd to the 
three classes of sonant sounds Just mentioned. 

The scheme thus drawn up and described may be 
taken as a general model, on the plan of which the 
spoken alphabet of any language may best be arranged, 
in order to the determination of its internal relations 
and to its comparison with other alphabets. Though 
hot accurate to the very last detail, it exhibits more of 
the relations of alphabetic sounds, and exhibits them 
more truly, than any other plan that can be adopted. 
And, restricted as it is in number of sounds, as com- 
pared with the immense variety—not less than three or 
four hundred—which enter into human speech, it yet 
includes those sounds which make up the bulk of all 
human speech, and of which many of the others are 
slightly differentiated variations. The possible num- 
ber of human articulations is theoretically infinite ; but 
practically it is rather narrowly limited ; and a system 
like our own, which contains about forty-four distinctly 
characterized sounds, is hardly excelled in richness, 
among tongues ancient or modern. 


68 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


Our scheme is to be valued, especially, as putting 
in a true light the relations of vowel and consonant: 
which, though their distinction is of the highest im- 
portance in phonetics, are by no means separate and 
independent systems, but only poles, as it were, In one 
continuous unitary series, and with a doubtful or neu- 
tral territory between them: they are simply the opener 
and closer sounds of the alphabetic system. Upon their 
alternation and antithesis depends the syllabic or “ artic- 
ulate” character of human speech: the stream of utter- 
ance is broken into articuld, ‘joints, by the imterven- 
tion of the closer sounds between the opener, connecting 
the latter at the same time that they separate them, 
giving distinctness and flexibility, and the power of 
endlessly variable combination. A mere succession of 
yowels passing into one another would be wanting in 
definite character; it would be rather sing-song than 
speech; and, on the other hand, a mere succession of 
consonants, though pronounceable by sufficient effort, 
would be an indistinct and disagreeable sputter. 

Another advantage of the same arrangement consists 
in its illustration of the general historical development 
of the alphabet. The primitive language of our family 
had not half the sounds given in the scheme; and those 
which it had were the extreme members of the sys- 
tem: among the vowels, only @, 2, and w, the corners 
of the vowel triangle; among the consonants, mainly 
the mutes, along with the nasals m and », which are 
also mutes as concerns their mouth-position; of the 
whole double class of fricatives, only the s. The / was 
not yet distinctly separated from the 7, nor the w and 
y from w and z There has been a filling-up of the 
scheme by the production of such new sounds as are 
intermediate in character, made by less strongly dif- 


Oe ee aS 


ee 


NEWER INTERMEDIATE SOUNDS. 69 


ferentiated positions of the organs. We may fairly 
say that, in the process of time, with greater acquired 
skill in the art of utterance, men’s organs have come 
to be able to make and use more nicely distinguished, 
more slightly shaded tones than at first. This is no 
mere loose poetic expression; nor, on the other hand, 
does it imply any organic change in the organs of 
utterance. ‘The case is only as in any other department 
of effort: the higher skill is won by the advanced or 
adult speakers, and the shape which they give to their 
inherited speech becomes the norm toward which new 
learners have to strive, attaining it when they can. 

In the process, too, is involved an evident manifes- 
tation of the tendency to ease. Not, indeed, that the 
hew sounds are in themselves any easier than the old; 
on the contrary, judged by some tests, they are harder : 
they are not so readily learned and reproduced by chil- 
dren; they are not so frequently met with in the gen- 
eral body of human languages. But they are easier to 
the practised speaker, in the rapid movements of con- 
tinuous utterance, when the organs are making constant 
quick transitions between vowel and consonant, between 
opener and closer positions. To reduce the length of 
swing of these transitions, by reducing the openness of 
the open sounds and the closeness of the close ones, is an 
economy which the articulating organs—of course, un- 
consciously—tind out for themselves by experience and 
learn to practise. It is the most general kind of assimi- 
lating influence exerted by consonant and vowel upon one 
another: each class draws the other toward itself; the 
vowels become more consonantal; the consonants be- 
come more vocalic. Hence the prevailing direction of 
phonetic change is from the extremities toward the mid- 
dle of the alphabetic scheme: the mutes become frica- 


nO CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


tives; the a (far) is changed to ¢ (they) and 2 (prque), or 
to o (note) and w (rule). Movement in the contrary 
direction is by no means unknown; but it is exceptional 
or under special causes: it is, as we have called it above, 
the eddy in the current. The central classes, of nasals 
and semivowels, which are least exposed to this general 
movement, are also, on the whole, the least convertible 
of the alphabetic sounds. To illustrate the effects of 
the tendency: in Sanskrit (the least altered, phonetically, 
of the tongues of our family), the a (far) is full thirty 
per cent. of the whole utterance; and we can easily 
reason back to a time when @ and the mutes were three 
quarters of the sounds heard in continuous speech ; in 
English, the most altered, @ is only about half of one 
per cent. of our utterance, while 7 (pique, pick) and a 
(hurt, hut), the closest and thinnest of the vowels, are 
over sixteen per cent.; and the fricatives have become 
rather more common than the mutes (each class, about 
eighteen per cent.).’ 

We have called this a process of assimilation; and 
under the same comprehensive head may be grouped 
the greater part of the other phonetic changes that 
occur in language. The combinations of elements to 
form words, their contraction by the omission of light 
vowels, often bring into contact or into proximity 
sounds which cannot be so uttered without too much 
muscular exertion: it is eased by adapting the one to 
the other. For example, many combinations of surd 
consonant with sonant have that degree of difficulty 
which we call impossibility (this is only a matter of 
degree); and nothing is more frequent in all language 


1 See the author’s “ Oriental and Linguistic Studies,” second series 
(1874), where many of the questions concerning the alphabet are more 
fully discussed. 


ASSIMILATION AND DISSIMILATION,. yd! 


than the interchange of surd and gonant utterance. 
There is also a more general movement here: since the 
sonant elements in connected speech are (including the 
vowels) much more numerous than the surd, the gen- 
eral weight of the assimilative force is in the direction 
of sonancy, and surds are converted into sonants more 
often than the reverse. 

There is a degree of assimilation effected in vowels 
by the consonants with which they come into imme- 
diate connection ; yet the cases are rather sporadic and 
often doubtful. The influence of vowels on other 
vowels, even when separated from them by conso- 
nants, is more marked, and: leads to some important 
classes of phenomena. The difference between man 
and men is ultimately due only to the former presence 
of an ¢-vowel in the plural ending, which colored by 
anticipation the preceding vowel: in Icelandic, the 
effect is still plainly illustrated in the forms deg and 
digum from dag’. In the Scythian languages, on the 
other hand, it is the final vowel of the base which 
assimilates that of the following suffixes, as will be 
noted hereafter (chapter xii.). 

Though assimilation is the leading principle in the 
mutual adjustment of sounds, its opposite, dissimilation, 
is not altogether unknown, as the close recurrence of 
two acts of the same organs is felt as burdensome, and — 
avoided by the alteration of one of them. 

Not only the parts of the same words, in their com- 
bination, but also separate words, in their collocation, 
affect one another; and the influence expresses itself 
particularly in their final elements. There are various 
circumstances which help to condition this, In our 
own and the majority of other families of speech, the 
formative or less indispensable element comes last, and 


92 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


is the one least efticiently conserved by the sense of its 
importance. Moreover, all experience shows that an 
“open syllable,’ one ending with an open or vowel 
sound, is easier, more “natural” to the organs, than a 
closed one, ending with a consonant. A mute, indeed, 
is hardly audible as final, unless the contact is broken 
again with a puff of flatus ; and something of the same 
disability clings also to the other consonants. The dif- 
ficulty is one which English-speakers can hardly realize, 
since they allow freely every consonant in their alpha- 
bet (with the accidental exception of the 2/-sound) at 
the end of a word, or of a syllable, before another con- 
sonant; but the Polynesian dialects, for example, ad- 
mit no groups of consonants anywhere, and end every 
word with a vowel; the literary Chinese has no final 
consonant except a nasal; the Greek, none save », a, p 
(n, 8,7); the Sanskrit allows only about half a dozen, 
and almost never a group of more than one; the Italian 
rarely has any final consonant; the French silences, as 
a rule, all save c, f, 7,7; the German tolerates no final 
sonant mutes: and so on. 7 

But the principle of ease does not find its sole exer- 
cise in the work of assimilation. Nothing is more fre- 
quent than for a language to take a dislike, as it were, 
to some particular sound or class of sounds, and to get 
rid of it by conversion into something else. We found 
an example of this above in the old English /-sound of 
cniht, etc. Most of the tongues of our family have cast 
out the ancient aspirate mutes, changing them to simple 
mutes or to spirants. The Greek early rejected the 
y-sound, and then the w, the latter, as the “ digamma,” 
just prolonging its existence into the historical period. 
Curious caprices, discordances between different Jlan- 
guages as to their predilections and avyersions, come 


MUTUAL INTERCHANGE OF SOUNDS. rs) 


abundantly to light in this department of phonctic 
change. Yet more exceptional and puzzling are the 
cases of interchange between two sounds: for exam- 
ple, the Armenian mutual exchange of surd and sonant 
(Dikran for Tigranes, and so on): to which the cock- 
ney confusion of w and v, and of the presence and 
absence of an initial 4, furnishes a. familiar, if undig- 
nified, parallel. And of a comparative difficulty which 
is at least as the square of the number of elements in- 
volved is “Grimm’s Law” of permutation of mutes, 
illustrated above (p. 57). Phonetic science is not yet 
far enough advanced to deal successfully with facts like 
this; no attempted explanation of the particular phe- 
nomenon in question does much more than ignore its 
real difficulties. : 

It must be carefully noted, indeed, that the reach of 
phonetics, its power to penetrate to the heart of its 
facts and account for them, is only limited. There is 
always one element in linguistic change which refuses 
scientific treatment: namely, the action of the human 
will. ‘The work is all done by human. beings, adapting 
means to ends, under the impulse of motives and the 
guidance of habits which are the resultant of causes so 
multifarious and obscure that they elude recognition 
and defy estimate. The phonetist is never able to put 
himself in an @ priort position; his business is only to 
note the facts, to determine the relation between the 
later and the earlier, and to account for the change as 
well as he can, showing of what tendencies, in which of 
their forms, it may be accounted the result. The real 
effective reason of a given phonetic change is that a 
community, which might have chosen otherwise, willed 
it to be thus; showing thereby the predominance of 
this or that one among the motives which a careful 


v4 CHANGE OF OUTER FORM OF WORDS. 


induction from the facts of universal language proves 
to govern men in this department of their action. 

The tendency of phonetic change is so decidedly 
toward the abbreviation and mutilation of words and 
forms that it has been, suitably enough, termed “ pho- 
netic decay.” Under the impulse to ease, the compo- 
nent elements of speech are first unified, then unbuilt 
and destroyed. It is the processes of combination (to 
be treated of in the seventh chapter) that open a wide 
field for the action of the tendency; if language had 
always remained in its original simple state, the sphere 
of change would have been a greatly restricted. one, and 
the effects far less comparable to decay. 

Before quitting the subject of changes of external 
form, we must give a moment’s attention to a class of 
changes which bear a very different character, although 
their cause has its points of analogy with those which 
we have been considering: the class, namely, of which 
we found instances in our modern ears and fared (p. 
38), as compared with the earlier ear and fér. When 
phonetic corruption has disguised too much, or has 
swept away, the characteristics of a form, so that it 
becomes an exceptional or anomalous case, there is 
an inclination to remodel it on a prevailing norm. The 
greater mass of cases exerts an assimilative influence 
upon the smaller. Or, we may say, it is a case of men- 
tal economy: an avoidance of the effort of memory in- 
volved in remembering exceptions and observing them 
accurately in practice. The formal distinction of plu- 
ral from singular was one which our language was 
never minded to give up. Of all the plural signs, the 
one which had the most distinctive character was s. 
The attention of the language-users became centred 
upon this as an affix by which the plural modification 


EXTENSION OF PREVAILING ANALOGIES. "5 


of sense was made, and they proceeded to apply it in 
words where it had not before been used; and the 
movement, once started, gathered force in its progress, 
until it swept in nearly all the nouns of the language. 
So with the verb. By the numerical predominance of 
forms like loved from love, the addition of a d got itself 
more conspicuously associated with the designation of 
past time; and men began to overlook the cases which 
by right of former usage ought to be made exceptions. 
Considerable numbers of verbs, in the middle age of 
our tongue, thus changed, like fare, their old mode of 
conjugation for a new. But the tendency is ever at 
work, and on a small scale as well as a large; and, of 
course, especially among those whose acquisition of their 
language has not been made complete and accurate. 
Children, above all others, are all the time blundering 
in this direction—saying gooder and badder, mans and 
foots, goed and comed, even brang and thunk—and 
items of such products creep not seldom into culti- 
vated speech. /ts was made in this way, in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries ; we have gained thus 
the double comparatives lesser and worser ; many are 
led to say pléad (like réad) instead of pleaded, and 
even to fabricate such unsupported anomalies as proven 
for proved. And the principle is often appealed to in 
explaining the processes of earlier language-making. 
The force of analogy is, in fact, one of the most potent 
in all language-history; as it makes whole classes of 
forms, so it has power to change their limits. 


CHAPTER V. 


GROWTH OF LANGUAGE: CHANGE IN THE INNER CONTENT 
OF WORDS. 


Wide reach and variety of this change ; underlying principles: looseness 
of tie between word and meaning; principle of economy; class- 
names and proper names. Illustrations: the planets and their kin. 
Restriction of general terms to specific use; extension of specific 
terms to wider use, Figurative extension ; illustrations, head, ete. ; 
forgetfulness of derivation. Growth of intellectual vocabulary from 
physical terms ; of means of formal expression from material terms ; 
auxiliaries, formal parts of speech; phrases. 


We come next to consider the other grand depart- 
ment of change in the existing material of language— 
namely, that of the inner content or meaning of words. 
This is just as vast a subject as the preceding; and, if 
possible, even more irreducible in its immensity and in- 
finite variety to the dimensions of a chapter. The pro- 
cesses of phonetic change have. been worked out with 
great industry by numerous students of language and 
brought into order and system, and the comparatively 
restricted and sensible movements of. the organs of 
speech investigated in order to form a concrete basis for 
their explanation; but no one has ever attempted to 
classify the processes of significant change, and the 
movements of the human mind under the variety of 
circumstances defy cataloguing. Yet we may hope 


TIE BETWEEN FORM AND CONTENT. ia 


within reasonable space to lay out at least the founda- 
tions of the subject, and to trace some of the chief 
directions of movement. 

It has been already pointed out that the separate 


possibility of external and internal change rests upon 


the nature of the tie, as a merely extraneous and unes- 
sential one, which connects the meaning of a word with 
its form. Were the case otherwise, the two kinds of 
change would be mutually dependent and inseparable ; 
as it is, each runs its own course and is determined by 
its own causes; even though the history of the two 
may often touch, or go on for a time in close connec- 
tion. We also saw that words were assigned to their 
specific uses (so far as it is possible to trace their his- 
tory) each at some definite time in the past, and for 
reasons which were satisfactory to the nomenclators, 
though they did not make the name either a definition 
or a description of the conception ; and that the name, 
once given, formed a new and closer tie with the thing 
named than with its own etymological ancestor. We 
took as illustration of this the word bishop, originally 
simply ‘ overseer;’ claiming that it was only a speci- 
men of the way things regularly go on in language. It 
is just so, for example, with przest, formerly speo- 
Bitepos, presbyter, elder, literally ‘older person ;’ so 
with volume, though no longer ‘rolled, as when the 
name was given ; with book, though not now a block of 
“beech ’-wood ; with paper, now made of other mate- 
rial than papyrus ; with gazette, which has ceased to be 
sold for a Venetian ‘ penny ;’ with bank, which has in- 
finitely outgrown the simple ‘bench’ of the money- 
changer in the market-place, while the bankrupt has 
vastly worse trials to endure than having his ‘ bench 
broken ;’ with candidate, though one in such a posi- 


8 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


tion is no longer expected to be ‘dressed in white ;? 
with copper and muslin, which come now from other 
quarters than Cyprus and Mosul; with lunatic, even if 
we discredit the moon’s influence on the disorder ; with 
Indian, though the error of the Spanish navigators, 
who thought they had discovered ‘the Indies’ in 
America, was detected a good while ago—and go on. in- 
definitely. | | 

We may see in all this something of the same prin- 
ciple of ease or economy which we found to underlie 
the changes of form. Were it altogether as easy, when 
the shape of one’s conception alters a little, or more 
than a little, to fling away its old name and make a new 
one; were it as easy, when a new conception presents 
itself, to give it an appellation before unheard-of, as to 
stretch a familiar term a little to cover it, then might 
there perhaps be no such thing as significant change in 
human speech ; as it is, the old material of language is 


constantly suffering extension and transferral to new 


uses, obstructed by no too intrusive sense of original 
meaning. Again, in virtue of the same principle, our 
words are, almost universally, classnames. There 1S, 
if narrowly enough regarded, a degree of individuality 
about every being, thing, act, quality, which would jus- 
tify it in laying claim to a separate appellation; but 
language would be utterly unmanageable if it were 
made up of such appellations; and, in practice, having 
named an individual thing, we apply the same name to 
whatever other things are enough like it to form a class 
with it. And thus, as we noted in the second chapter, 
the acquisition of language is the adoption of certain 
classifications ; herein consists a large share of its value 
asa means of training. The classes, to be sure, are of 
very different extent: there are even some—as sun, 


PROPER NAMES. "9 


moon, God, world—which have a natural restriction toa 
single member. Then, again, there are classes of which 
the individuals in their separateness rise to such impor- 
tance for us that we give each in addition a name be- 
longing to it as an individual only, or a “proper name,” 
as we call it: such are the persons of our community, 
our pet animals, streets, towns, and other localities, the 
planets, months, week-days, and the like. In this class- 
use is an additional facilitation of significant change ; 
for every class is liable to revision, in consequence of 
increased knowledge, keener insight, and consequent 
change of criteria. 

We shall best establish these fundamental princi- 
ples, and win suggestion of a classification for the 
modes of change, by glancing over a series of illustra- 
tions. 

In the olden time, certain heavenly bodies which, as 
they circled daily about the earth from east to west, 
had also a slower and more irregular movement in the 
opposite direction among their fellows, were by a little 
community in the eastern Meaiteancnt called plané- 
tés, because the word in their language meant ‘ wan- 
derer” From their use, we imported it into our own 
tongue i in the form planet, mutilated in shape and hay- 
ing no etymological connection with any other of our 
words. The class included the sun and moon not one 
whit less than Jupiter and Mars; it did not include the 
earth. But within two or three centuries past, we have 
acquired new knowledge which has led us to alter this 
classification, and give a new value to its nomenclature. 
We see now that, in a truer sense, the sun is not a 
planet, but that the earth is one; and planet has been 
changed to mean, not a ‘wandering star’ as viewed 
from earth, but a body that moves about a central sun. 


SO CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


The moon is no. longer precisely a planet, but a second- 
ary planet, a satellite. Having thus altered the concep- 
tion designated by moon, we are ready, when the tele- 
scope discloses to us like satellites of other planets, to 
convert this unique appellation into a classname, call- 
ing them all alike moons. So also with sun: having 
found that the sun is essentially akin with the fixed 
stars rather than with the planets, we put him into the 
linguistic class of fixed stars, or we call the fixed stars 
SUNS. | 
The class of planets is one of those already referred 
to, of which each separate member calls for an indi- 
vidual designation, or ‘proper name.” Apart from 
the sun and moon, however, they did not so impress 
the popular mind as to receive popular titles, and it fell 
to the learned, the astronomo-astrologers; to christen 
them. These, though they did their work reflectively, 
were not altogether arbitrary in their selection; they 
took the names of gods, since Sun and Moon were al- 
ready names of gods as well as of luminaries ; and they 
distributed the names—Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, 
Venus—under the guidance of motives which we can 
at least in part recognize: Mercury, for example, the 
swift messenger of ‘the divinities, had the most rapidly 
moving and changeful of the class called after him. 
Then, by a like transfer, the alchemists gave the god- 
and planet-name to the most mobile of the metals. 
And now, though the god Mercury is only a memory 
of a state of things long gone by, Jlerewry and mer- 
cury are still words of familiar use in our vocabulary ; 
we even shut up mercury in a tube and bid him, as 
Jupiter used to do, go up and down, to tell us what the 
weather is. Again, the Frenchman calls the middle day 
of his week ‘ Mercury’s day’ (Alercredi), though with- 


PLANETS AND THEIR CONNECTIONS. 81 


out being well aware of it, and yet less comprehending 
why : it is because, in the distribution by the astrologers 
of the hours through the whole week to the planets in 
their order, the first hour of that day fell to the re- 
gency of Mercury. Then, once upon a time, these 
Latin day-names were mechanically turned into German 
shape for the use of Germanic peoples, and Mercuri 
dies became Woden’s day, our Wednesday : and so with 
the rest. Certainly a most curious history of transfer, 
which brings out of a series of reflective acts of nomen- 
clature made by learned heathen—and not without 
Christian aid, since the planetary day-names would have 
remained to Europe, as to India, a mere astrologers’ 
fancy, but for Christianity and its inheritance of the 
Jewish seven-day period as a leading measure of time— 
a little group of some of the commonest and most truly 
popular terms in our language! The same words, more- 
over, have been made to answer other purposes: the 
astrologers held that a person born under the special in- 
fluence of a certain planet was characterized by a cor- 
responding disposition ; and those dispositions we still 
call mereurial, jovial, saturnine ; martial and venereal, 
on the other hand, come from the office of the divinities 
themselves. 

Again, we use swum and moon to designate ‘ day’ and 
‘month, saying “so many suns,” “so many moons.” 
Here is simply a striking ellipsis: we mean really “so 
many [revolutions of] sun or moon ”—counting, how- 
ever, the revolutions on different principles; else a sun 
would bea ‘year.’ Then month, which is only a de- 
rivative form of moon, has been transferred to desig- 
nate an arbitrary period of twenty-eight to thirty-one 
days, having nothing whatever to do with the moon’s 
movement. Jurther, a moon (or dune) is in fortification 


82 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


a crescent-shaped outwork: an analogy, this time, of 
shape merely. Nor is it meant to imply that the moon 
is always, or usually, of this shape; but only that she 
is the most conspicuous object in nature that ever as- 
sumes the shape. If we want to be more precise, we 
say “ crescent-shaped.” | But here also is an ellipsis, and 
of the most striking kind; for crescent literally means 
simply ‘ growing,’ and does not contain even a hint of 
the moon. Moreover, the moon does not have this 
shape all the time she is “ growing,” but only at.a par- 
ticular period, and she has it just as much when decreas- 
ing as when increasing; so that crescent really means 
‘fresembling the moon at a certain stage of her] grow- 
ing [as also of her waning].’ It is good English, too, 
to talk of a moon-struck idler as mooning around, al- 
though we should indignantly deny the belief in lunar 
influences which suggested the expressions. 

This may seem like an aimless roaming ‘through one 
department of our vocabulary; but its heterogeneous- 
ness is due to the character of the facts with which we 
have to deal, and is an important part of the value of 
the illustration. It is simply impossible to exhaust the 
variety of significant change in linguistic growth: there 
is no conceivable direction in which a transfer may not 
be made; there is no assignable distance to which a 
word may not wander from its primitive meaning. 
There is no such thing as a concise and exhaustive clas- 
sification of such variety ; all we can do is to point out 
some of the main divisions, the leading directions in 
which the movement goes on, neglecting the unclassi- 
fied and perhaps in part unclassifiable residue. 

One of the largest classes (already more than once 
hinted at) has a striking example in crescent. Crescent, 
‘ erowing, is a word of the widest application ; a young 


NAMES NOT DEFINITIONS. 83 


child or tree, an aggregating crystal, a new-built fire, a 
beginning reputation, an evolving cosmos, are really as 
much crescent as a young (so, by a figure, we call it) 
moon. ‘To seize upon the word as specific title of the 
growing moon, then, is to commit a very bold and ar- 
bitrary act of restriction. But the act is also open to 
objection on another side. It takes account of only a 
single, and that a very trivial, characteristic of an object 
which has many others. All we can say in reply is that 
nomenclature is a free and easy process, and that such 
objections count for nothing as against the demands of 
convenient expression. The case was the same with 
bishop, ‘ overseer, as we saw above; it was the same 
with green, ‘ growing;’ it was the same with planet, 
‘wanderer.’ It is believed by the etymologists that 
moon itself comes in a similar way from a root mean- 
ing ‘measure ;’ our satellite having been thus desig- 
nated, in remote ages, because of her office in measur- 
ing the longer intervals of time: “so many moons.” 
Certainly, her Latin name duna is for luena, and re- 
lated with Zwa, and so describes her simply as a ‘shiner.’ 
And sun goes back, it is believed, to an equivalent 
source. Comparative philology claims to have shown 
(as will be noticed hereafter) that the earliest appella- | 
tions of specific things were in general won in precisely | 
this way, the germs of speech being expressions for 
acts and qualities. However that may be, it is certain 
that, through the whole history of language since, the 
method has been in constant use: epithets of things, 
representing some one of their various attributes, be- 
come the names of things, through every department 
of nomenclature. Our etymologies are apt to bring us 
back finally to some so general, comprehensive, colorless 
idea, that we almost wonder how it can have given 


84 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


birth to such strongly-marked progeny. All the varied 
and definite meanings of post (to take a further example 
or two) go back to the sense of ‘put, placed’ The 
idea of volling is specialized into the muster 7o// and 
the breakfast voll, the voll of the drum and rolls of 
fat; by a longer route, it-comes to us in the form of 
the actor’s rdle ; and a slight addition makes of it con- 
trol, of which the connection with its original escapes 


all but skilled and curious eyes. . 7 


Another leading principle, of the first order of im- 


| portance, is somewhat contrary in its effects to that 


_ which we have been considering: it is the principle of 


extension, as opposed to restriction, of the sphere of 


meaning of a term. A name won by specialization be- 


gins an independent career, which ends in its gaining 
the position of head of a tribe. Mr. Miller, named by 
the specializing process from his vocation, becomes the 
father of a multitude of Millers, so named from their 
relation to him, without the least regard to their voca- 
tions. And he may turn out the founder of a sect, who 
shall call themselves Millerites after him, and make his 
name as conspicuous an element in the nomenclature of 
theology as is already that of Arius or Nestorius. The 
butterflies were first named in the species which showed 
itself butter-colored as it flew: the title is extended, 
heedless of the differences of color, to every other kin- 
dred species. Our recent examples showed us suv and 
moon made class-names. Orescent develops a group of 
new uses out of the fortuitous presence of the figure 
on the Mohammedan standard. No one knows precise- 
ly why the vose was so entitled: the botanist has made 
it the type of a whole order of quite diverse plants, 
which he terms rosacew, ‘rose-like” A great part of 
our acquisitions of new knowledge go to swell old estab- 


EXTENSION OF APPLICATION, 85 


lished classes, expending themselves, so far as language 
is concerned, in the extension of existing classnames. 
To take an example of the most obvious kind: the dis- 
covery of every new animal or plant or mineral stretches 
a little not only the scope of. those widest terms, but 
also of a whole series of subordinate ones. And some- 
times the change rises to conspicuous value. The zo- 
ologist’s conception of horse, for example, has under- 
gone no slight modification by the recent discovery in 
the American West of numerous fossil species, of 
greatly varying size and structure. Every exploring 
naturalist, in fact, is all the time illustrating, in an 
openly reflective way, in his naming of species, the two 
principles which direct a great part of the world’s less 
conscious nomenclature. Having in his hands a new 
plant, he at once proceeds to classify it: that is to say, 
to determine of what current class-names it must swell 
the content: he finds it, we will suppose, a plant, and a 
phenogamous, a dicotyledonous, a rose-like plant, and 
finally a rubus or ‘ blackberry.’ But it has peculiarities 
which entitle it to a specific designation ; and this must 
be gained by the other method : the nomenclator selects 
the quality which he will describe, and christens it meg- 
wlocarpus, ‘big-fruited, gracilis, ‘elegant,’ or the like; 
or he gets a suggestion from the locality, the situation, 
the circumstances of discovery; or he connects it with 
some still more extraneous matter: so, for instance, he 
compliments his friend Smith by naming it Sméthii. 
The extension of a name’s application, however, in- 
volves a great deal that is far less plain and legitimate 
than all this. Not only a true accordance in generic 
character, but relations of an infinitely looser kind, are 
used to tie together the classes that go under one name. 
We saw lately a heathen god, a planet, a metal, a tem- 


roammrennraresneerereneaenn 


86 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


perament, and a day of the week, all forced into un- 
natural union under the title mercury. Since fruit is 
apt to be green when not fully ripe, green becomes a 
synonym for ‘unripe’ (and. so we can commit the fa- 
miliar linguistic paradox that blackberries are red when 
they are green); and then, in less elegant diction, it is 
again shifted to signify ‘immature, not versed in the 
ways of the world”. Such transfers we are wont to call 
figurative; they rest upon an apprehended analogy, 
but one generally so distant, subjective, fanciful, that 
we can hardly regard it as sufficient to make a connect- 
ed class. Instances of this kind lie all about us, in our 
most familiar words; and this department of change is 
of so conspicuous importance in language-history that 
we must dwell upon it a little longer. Our minds de- 
light in the discovery of resemblances, near and remote, 


obvious and obscure, and are always ready to make 


them the foundation of an association that involves the 
addition of a new use to an old name. Thus, not only 
an animal has a head, but also a pin, a cabbage. A bed 
has one, where the head of its occupant usually lies— 
and it has a foot for the same reason, besides the four 
feet it stands on by another figure, and the six fee? it 
measures by yet another. More remarkable still, a river 
has a head: its highest point, namely, where it heads 
among the highlands—and so it has arms, or, by an- 
other figure, branches; or, by another, feeders ; or, by 
another, ¢trzbutaries ; and it has a right and left s¢de ; 
and it has a ded, in which, by an unfortunate mixture 
of metaphors, it vwns instead of lying still; and then, 
at the farthest extremity from the head, we find, not its 
foot, but its mouth. Further, an army, a school, a sect, 
has its head. A class has its head and its tail; and so 
has a coin, though in quite a different way. A sermon 


READINESS TO FORGET DERIVATION. 87 


has its Aeads, as divided by their different headings . 
and we can beg to be spared anything more “on that 
head.” A sore comes toa head; and so, by one step 
further away from literalness, a conspiracy or other dis- 
order in the state, the body politic, does the same. We 
give a horse his head, which he had before our dona- 
tion ; and then we treat in the same way our passions— 
that is to say, if by their overmastering violence we lose 
our heads. And so on, ad infinitum. 


These side or figurative uses of a word do not per- 
plex us; they do not even strike us as anything out of 


the way ; they are part and parcel of the sphere of ap- 
plication of the word. For it is an important item in 
this process of transfer that we gradually lose our sense 
of the figure implied, and come to employ each sign as 
if it had always been the simple and downright repre- 
sentative of its idea. Here we see again the willing- 
ness, which has been already pointed out, and which is 
essential to the prosperous development of a language, 
to forget the origin of a name when once it is won, to 
let drop the old associations and suggestions which be- 
longed to it in virtue of its etymology, and invest it 
with a new set appertaining to its present use. Per- 
haps there is in English hardly a more striking example 
of this than our word butterfly, a name of utterly pro- 
saic and trivial origin, but which has become truly po- 
etic and elegant, as we think in connection with it of 
the beautiful creatures it designates, and not one in a 
thousand has ever had come into his head the idea that 
it literally means ‘a jly of butter-color. The relics of 
forgotten derivations, of faded metaphors, are scattered 
thickly through every part of our vocabulary. It is, to 
our apprehension, in the nature of a word to have its 
figurative as well as its literal uses and applications ; we 
5 


88 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


inherited our vocabulary in that condition ; and, by new 
discoveries of analogies and new transfers of meaning, 
we are all the time adding to the confusion—if it were 
a confusion. Sometimes the connection between the 
different senses is obvious on the least reflection ; some- 
times, again, it is so obscure that we cannot find it, or 
that we conceive it wrongly; ordinarily, we do not con- 
cern ourselves about the matter; we use each word as 
we have learned it, leaving to the lexicographer to fol- 
low up the ramifications to their source in its primitive 
or etymological meaning. 

A conspicuous branch of the department of figu- 
rative transfer, and one of indispensable importance in 
the history of language, is the application of terms hay- 
ing a physical, sensible meaning, to the designation of 
intellectual and moral conceptions and their relations. 
It is almost useless to attempt to illustrate this; the ex- 
amples would come crowding in too numerously to be 
dealt with: we will merely notice a few of those which 
happen to be offered in the preceding paragraph. _Per- 
plez means ‘braid together, intertwine. Simple is 
‘without fold,’ as distinguished from what is double, or 
‘two-fold ;’ in s¢emplieity and duplicity we have a 
moral contrast more distinctly brought to view; appli- 
cation contains the same root, and denotes an actual 
physical ‘folding or bending to’ anything, so as to fit 
it closely; while amply intimates a ‘folding in? Jm- 
portant means ‘ carrying within ;’ that is, ‘having a 
content, not empty.’ Apprehension signifies literally 
the ‘taking hold’ of a thing. elation is a ‘ carrying 
back,’ as transfer is a ‘carrying across’ in Latin, and 
metaphor nearly the same thing in Greek. To cnwest is 
to ‘put into clothes ;’ to develop is to ‘unwrap. TZriv- 
cal is what is found ‘at the street-crossings ;’ anything 


- 


FIGURATIVE WORDS. 89 


is obvious which meets us ‘in the way,’ which ocewrs to, 
or “runs against’ us. Derivation involves the curious- 
ly special idea of drawing off water ‘from the bank? of 
a rwver, for irrigation or the like. To suggest is to 
‘carry under,’ or supply, as it were, from beneath, not 
conspicuously—and so on. All these are from the 
Latin part of our language, which furnishes examples 
in the greatest abundance, because our philosophical and 
scientifie vocabulary. comes mainly from that source ; 
but there is plenty like itin the Saxon part also. Wrong 
is ‘wrung’ or ‘twisted, as its opposite right is ‘straight ;? 
and downright involves the same figure as upright, as 
having nothing oblique or indirect about it. A striking 
example needs no comment. To Jorget is the opposite 
of to get, but signifies only a mental loss. We sce 
things that never come before our bodily eyes. And 
point out, let drop, follow up, lay down, come into the 
head, out of the way, are instances of phrases that show 
plainly a similar shift of application. In fact, our 
whole mental and moral vocabulary has been gained 
precisely in this way ; the etymologist feels that he has _ 
not finished tracing out the history of any one of its 
terms until he has hunted it back to the physical con- 
ception in which, by the general analogies of language, 
it must have had its origin. | 
Thus, as the general movement of human knowl- \ 
edge is from the recognition of sensible objects to an — 
ever finer analysis of their qualities and determination 
of their relations, and to the apprehension of more rec- | 
ondite existences, objects of thought, so, as the accom- 
paniment and necessary consequence, there is a move- 
ment in the whole vocabulary of language from the 
designation of what is coarser, grosser, more material, 
to the designation of what is finer, more abstract and 


90 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


conceptional, more formal. Considered with reference 
to the ends rather than the methods of expression, there 
is no grander phenomenon than this in all language-his- 
tory. But the evolution of the intellectual vocabulary 
is only one division of the movement ;.there is another 
to which a few moments’ attention must be given. 

We have a verb, be, bearing the purely formal gram- 
matical office of connecting a subject with its predicate. 
Such a connective is wanting in many languages, which 
are obliged simply to set the two elements side by side, 
leaving their relation to be supplied by the mind. Its 
conjugation is made up of various discordant parts 5 
which, however, agree in the quality of derivation from 
roots having a distinct physical meaning: am, 2s, are, 
come from as, which signified either ‘ breathe’ or ‘ sit ;’ 
was, were, from vas, ‘abide;’ be, been, from ‘bhi, 
‘orow. The French has filled up its scheme of the 
same verb from the Latin stare, ‘stand.’ The develop- 
ment of meaning here is analogous with what we have 
been considering, a case of transfer and extension—ex- 
tension so wide that it has effaced all that was distinc- 
tive in the words; we may call it an attenuation, a fad- 
ing-out, a pores formalizing, of what was before 
solid, positive, substantial. 

The same. general connective be, when used with the 
past participle of a transitive verb, becomes an “ auxil- 
iary,’ making a whole conjugation of what we call 
“passive ” forms—“I am loved,” etc.; with a present 
participle, it makes a like scheme of “ continuous” or 
“imperfect ” tenses—“ I am loving,” etc. It thus en- 
ters just as fully into the service of formal grammatical 
expression as the formative endings of languages of 
other habit than ours. We have many other words of 
which the history and present application are nearly 


VERBAL AUXILIARIES. 91 


the same. There is do, which, from the original phiysi- 
cal notion of ‘set, place, has been extended and for- 
malized into expressing efficient action of every kind— 
do good, do one’s best, do to death, and so on; and 
which also does service as verbal auxiliary—I do love, 
did I love? ete. Again, the Latin root cap (capere) 
means ‘seize, grasp.’ Its Germanic correspondent is 
hab, in Gothic haban, German haben, our have. But 
here the more physical sense of ‘ grasp’ has almost dis- 
appeared (we have it in Germ. handhabe, our haft, the 
part of an instrument that is ‘ grasped’ by the hand) ; 
in its place has come the more conceptional one of ‘ pos- 
sess. So also with the Latin habere, the relation of 
which to capere on the one hand and haben on the other 
is a puzzle to the etymologists. Finally, this too has 
been turned to use in verbal expression, and by a trans- 
fer which, though illustrated in the history of many 
languages, must be called a very remarkable one. Pres- 
ent possession often implies past action : Aabco cultellum 
mentum, habeo virgulam fissam, habeo digitum vul- 
neratum, ‘I possess my knife found (recovered after 
loss), I possess a twig that is split, I have a wounded 
finger:’ here the several conditions have been preceded 
by the several acts, of finding, splitting, wounding. On 
this absurdly narrow basis is built up the whole im- 
mense structure of the “ perfect ”-tense expression : 
the phrase shifts its centre of gravity from the ex- 
pressed condition to. the implied antecedent act seared. 
have found the knife, ich habe das Messer gefunden, 
Ju trouvé le couteau, become indicators of a peculiar 
variety of past action contemplated as completed: fur- 
ther examples are the Sanskrit kritavdn, ° [I am] pos- 
sessing [something] done,’ i. e. ‘I have done ;’ and 
Turkish dogd-wm, ‘striking mine, i. e. I have struck? 


92 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


The next step is to forget how have came by its “ per- 
fect? meaning, and to use it with all sorts of verbs, , 
where an etymological analysis would make nonsense : 
asin I have lost the knife, I have lived (German and 
French the same); and, in English, even £ have come, 
where the other languages still say, more properly, ‘I 
am come,’ | 

But the same verb has other auxiliary work to do. 
The phrases habeo virgulam ad findendum, pat une 
verge & fendre, ich habe ein Aestchen zu spalten, [ have 
a twig to split (for splitting), as plainly imply a con- 
templated future action. They become formal verbal 
expressions when, by a like shift of emphasis and ap- 
prehended connection with that noted above, the con- 
struction is changed to Z have to cut a twig, and the 
noun is viewed no longer as object of the have, but 
rather of the other verb, the infinitive; and yet more 
completely when (again as above) the construction is so 
extended that we say J have to strike, I have to go, L 
have to be careful. We thus have a phrase denoting 
obligation to future action, developed out of the same 
expression for ‘seizing’ which is also used to denote 
past action. The French has gone still further. Not 
emphasizing, as we ‘do, the idea of obligation, it uses 
the same phrase as simple expression of futurity ; and 
more, it combines the auxiliary into one word with the 
other verb—je fendrai (for je fendre ai, i. e. Pai a 
Jendre) ; in which no French speaker, unless philologi- 
cally educated, ever recognizes the elements of the com- 
bination. 

Once more, the English is peculiar in expressing a 
causative sense by the same agency: J had my horse 
shod, I will have the book bound, point to a different 
aspect of the action, setting it forth as something 


s 


VERBAL AUXILIARIES. 93 


brought about, though not executed, by the actor. It is 
merely a turning-up to view of another of the many 
implications involved in the state of possession. 

All our verbal auxiliaries come after a like fashion. - 
Behind our shall and will, as signs of future action, lies 
a history of transfers and extensions. One step back, 
L shall means ‘TI owe, am under obligation ;? Z will, «1 
intend, purpose.’ Both are examples of that important 
little class of Germanic verbs called “ preterito-presen- 
tial,” because (by a change just the opposite of that 
which we noticed above) they have won their present 
meaning through a “perfect” one. And shail, it is 
claimed, goes back finally to ‘I have offended, and 
hence ‘am under penalty ;’ wll, to ‘I have selected’ 
(yet more primitively, ‘have enclosed or surrounded’). 
The Greek xéernuas, ‘I have acquired’ (colloquial Eng- 
lish, Z have got), for ‘I possess,’ is a parallel here: in- 
deed, both Greek and Sanskrit have one of the very 
verbs that compose the Germanic class: Skt. véda, Gr. 
oida, Goth. wait, Germ. weiss, ‘I wot or know :” liter- 
ally, ‘I have seen.’ And the Latin furnishes a very 
notable parallel to the shifts of construction we have 
been instancing, in its use of the accusative as “ sub- 
ject” of an infinitive: it all grew out of an inorganic 
extension of such constructions as dicité te errare, ‘he 
declares you to err. Toward this we have in English 
at least a near approach in phrases like “ for him to err 
is arare thing,” where we have almost forgotten that 
Jor logically connects him with rare: “ to err isa thing 
rare for him.” Another kindred case is the infinitive 
in passive sense in German causative phrases: er liess 
sich nicht halten, ‘he did not let himself be held ;? lit- 
erally, ‘did not let [any one] hold him.’ 

This kind of change is by no means limited to ver- 


94 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


bal constructions, as a few examples from other parts of 
the grammar will show. In Anglo-Saxon there was no 
such word as of, as distinguished from of’; their sepa- 
ration, in form and meaning, is a piece of very recent 
word-history. Of is the earlier sense, as the more ma- 
terial: though itself, as preposition, a sign of relation, 
and therefore formal as compared with our general vo- 
cabulary. But in of we have all limited and definable 
relation extinguished ; the word is a token of the most 
indefinite appurtenance, the absolute equivalent of a 
genitive case-ending, a link between a noun and its 
modifying noun, sign of the adjective relation of one 
noun to another. The Irench de has a history not un- 


like this. Almost as striking an example is our for, 


originally the same word with fore, ‘before, in front 
of ;’ in German the word has taken on a threefold form 
for its various offices, in vor, fiir, and the inseparable 
prefix ver—each of more attenuated: quality than its 
predecessor. Zo retains in general its ancient office as 
designating approach ; but as “sign of the infinitive ” 
it is as purely formal as of itself; in to have, for exam- 
ple, it is nothing more than a kind of modern substitute 
for the old ending an of haban: we have absolutely 
lost from memory its real value, as that of a preposition 
governing a verbal noun. 

But there is another shift of construction lying back 
of the whole class of prepositions. The oldest of them 
were originally—as many of them still continue also 
to be—adverbs, modifiers of verbal action, only aiding 
to determine the noun-case which that action should 
take as its further adjunct. Here is a whole part of 
speech, of an especially formal character, developed from 
those of more material aspect and office. The conjunc- 
tions are another case of the same kind, though into 


RELATIVE PRONOUNS. 95 


the details of their history we have no time here to en- 
ter. And the articles, sometimes ranked as a separate 
part of speech, are likewise altered and faded words: 
their originals, to be sure, were formal enough ; but 
they are etherealized formals: the definite article is 
a demonstrative, from which the full demonstrative 
force has been withdrawn ; the indefinite article comes 
by a similar process of attenuation from the numeral 
‘ one.’ : 

The great variety and prominent importance of this 
department of change of meaning tempt to protracted 
illustration ; and no brief array of examples can do it 
justice: but we must content ourselves with only one 
more. Alongside the conjunctions, the relative pro- 
nouns are by far the most important of the connectives 
by which we bind together separate assertions, making 
a period out of what would otherwise be a loose agere- 
gation of phrases. They are pronouns with conjunctive 
force ; they fasten distinctly to their antecedent an as- 
sertion which would otherwise’ be connected with it 
only by implication. There are plenty of languages in 
the world which have no such syntactical apparatus ; 
and we, too, could make shift to get on well enough 
without it. To say “my friend had had a fever; he 
was not quite recovered ; he was looking pale and Wey 
is fully sufficient to enable the hearer to combine the 
circumstances in their proper relations. We only put 
into expression the necessarily implied mental act when 
we say “my friend, who had had a fever from which 
he was not quite recovered, was looking ill;” and we 
have no small variety of other ways of putting the 
same thing: “he was looking ill because (or, for) he 
had had” ete.; or, “my friend, being not yet recoy- 
ered from a recent fever, was looking ill;” and so on. 


96 CHANGE OF INNER CONTENT OF WORDS. 


The various modes of statement are devices for present- 
ing to more special attention one and another aspect of 
a fact and its causes; their possibility is an added deco- 
ration rather than a substantial resource of speech ; they 
serve a rhetorical purpose. But the relatives, which, 
though not indispensable, are an agency we could hard- 
ly afford to miss, are only a comparatively recent acqui- 
sition. They are demonstratives and interrogatives put 
to a new use; employed first with pregnant allusion to 
an antecedent, then gaining such allusion as an essential 
element. The construction was in a forming and doubt- 
ful state in our earliest English, and who and whach 
won their relative force only considerably later. 

It is by no means only in verbal phrases and other 
examples of the reduction of terms of independent 
meaning to formal value that language exhibits its char- 
acteristic tendency toward oblivion of original meaning 
and disregard of etymological concinnity. Most tongues 
are full of idiomatic phrases, which, when we attempt 
to analyze them, are often obscure or meaningless or 
absurd, and which nevertheless constitute no small part 
of the strength and charm of expression. Zake place 
is a fair English example; the same expression in Ger- 
man, Platz nehmen, means ‘ sit down,’ while to repre- 
sent our meaning the German says rather Statt jinden, 
‘find stead.” In French we may instance avoir beau, 
literally ‘to have beautiful,’ used to intimate the use- 
lessness of an action: 71 a beaw sexcuser, ‘he tries in 
vain to excuse himself ;’ or en vouloir, literally ‘wish 
about it,’ but meaning ‘ bear a grudge.’ And between 
the three equivalent expressions there 7s, al y a, liter- 
ally ‘it has there,’ and es gibt, ‘it gives, it is hard to 
choose the one which implies the most curious twist 
of meaning. The very abundance and heterogeneous- 


VARIETY OF SIGNIFICANT CHANGE. 97 


ness of the material here discourage more extended 
illustration. 

It is, as has been already said, impossible to exhaust 
the variety of significant change in linguistic growth. 
Whole volumes, full of interest and instruction, have 
been produced upon this subject alone; and if our ob- 
ject were general interest and instruction, we should 
not quit the theme here. We should dwell, for in- 
stance, upon the curious fate which, while some words 
fade to the thinnest skeleton, almost shadow, of sub- 
stantial value, crowds others with pregnancy and force 
—like home, comfort, tact (literally ‘ towch’), taste, hu- 
mor (‘moisture’); upon the contrast between words 
which from a low or an indifferent origin rise to dig- 
nity, and those which from a respectable origin sink 
into contempt (we had above, p. 40, an example of both 
these changes in the same word, our knight and the 
German knecht); between words which become go con- 
ventionally inexpressive that we seek for newer and 
more positive phraseology, and those which, dealing 
with delicate subjects, become too directly suggestive, 
and are replaced in refined usage by others which hint 
more remotely at the intended sense; between words 
which for no assignable reason become the fashion, and 
others which as causelessly come to be looked askance 
at and avoided. Some of these cases will call for re- 
mark farther on, in other connections: for the present 
we must be satisfied with having noticed at least the 
principal tendencies, those which have most influence 
on the growth of language. 


7 CHAPTER VI. 
GROWTH OF LANGUAGE: LOSS OF WORDS AND FORMS. 


Loss of words; its causes; obsolescent and obsolete words. Loss of 
meanings. Loss of grammatical forms and the distinctions conveyed 
by them; examples; excess of this loss in English. 


Wer saw above (in the third chapter) that loss of 
what had constituted the material of a language was an 
appreciable element in that constant change and devel- 
opment which we called its growth. Even such a pro- 
cess of subtraction is fairly enough to be reckoned as a 
part of growth; just as the growth of organic beings 
consists in removal as well as in resupply. And our 
preliminary illustrations showed us that the loss might 
consist either in the disappearance of complete words 
from a vocabulary, or in the disappearance of the signs 
of grammatical distinction. | 

The reduction of a vocabulary by loss of its words 
is a matter so simple that we shall not need to spend 
much time upon it. 

As all the items of a given language are kept in ex- 
istence only by being taught and learned, it is evident 
enough that the cessation of this process of tradition with 
regard to any item will bring about its annihilation. 
Existence, in speech, is use; and disuse is destruction. 
Whatever leads to disuse leads to loss; and there is 


DISAPPEARANCE OF WORDS. 99 


nothing else that can have that effect. And there are, 
accordingly, two principal ways in which loss can occur. 

In the first place, the disappearance from before the 
attention of a community of the conceptions designated 
by certain words occasions the disappearance of those 
words. If anything that people once thought and 
talked about comes to concern them no longer, its 
phraseology goes into oblivion—unless, of course, it be 
preserved, as a memory of the past, by some of those 
means which culture supplies. It has been so, for ex- 
ample, with the old heathen religion of our Germanic 
ancestors. Once, the names of Thor and Woden, of 
Tuis and Freya, and the rest of them, were as common 
on English lips as those of Christ and the Virgin Mary, 
of St. Peter and St. Paul, are nowadays; but, save for 
their fortuitous and generally unrecognized retention in 
the names of the days of the weck, they have become 
extinct in the speech of common life, and are known 
only to curious students of antiquity. The same thing 
is true of a host of words belonging to the vocabulary 
of the ancient arts and sciences, the ancient institutions 
and customs. The technical terms of chivalry mostly 
fell out as those of modern warfare came in; those of 
astrology, as this was crowded from existence by as- 
tronomical science. Only, we have here and there, not 
always consciously, in our present speech, reminiscences 
of the old order of things, in the shape of words trans- 
ferred to new uses. Even so common and indispensa- 
ble a term as influence is said to be of astrological ori- 
gin, denoting in its early use only the bearing of the 
heavenly bodies on human affairs; disaster is etymo- 
logically a mishap due toa baleful stellar aspect ; and 
we have already noted jovial, saturnine, mercurial, as 
names for dispositions that were regarded as produced 


100 LOSS OF WORDS AND FORMS. 


by the énfluence of planets. In like manner, part of 
the vocabulary of hawking, when that mode of secur- 
ing game went out of. use, was transferred to the new 
apparatus: as an especially noticeable instance, musket 
was the name of a certain small hawk. 

But, in the second place, words are crowded out of 
use, and so out of life, by the coming into use of other 
words which mean the same thing, and which for some 
cause, definable or not, win the popular favor, and sup- 
plant their predecessors. Of this process we found 
examples in our specimen-passage: the honest Saxon 
derivatives or compounds /wlend, reste-dag, leorning- 
cnihtas, are replaced in our usage by the outlandish 
terms Savior, sabbath, disciple, and have themselves 
disappeared. And this is but a specimen of a process 
of wide reach and abundant results in English. In con- 
sequence of the Norman conquest, a considerable body 
of French words was poured in upon our language, and 
gradually accepted and put to service as an integral part 
of it. To no small degree, indeed, as a direct enrich- 
ment of English speech, by furnishing expression for 
new ideas, or French synonyms for Saxon words, each 
useful in its own style and connection: like brotherly 
and fraternal, outlandish and foreign, forgwe and par- 
don, rot and decay, hue and color, stench and odor, fore- 
sight and providence. But to a considerable extent also 
there was an over-enrichment, which the requirements 
of practical use did not justify; and the intrusion of 
the new caused an extrusion of the old. Thus a host 
of Saxon words gave place to substitutes of foreign 
origin: nothing would be easier than to add to the 
examples given above numberless others, like wanhope 
displaced by despair, ayenbite by remorse, inwit by 
conscience, and so on. 


DISAPPEARANCE OF WORDS. 101 


Nor is it by foreign importation alone that words of 
native growth become superfluous, and are dropped out 
of a language. There are cases in abundance of a 
word’s simply going out of fashion, becoming obso- 
lescent and then obsolete, by an act of supersession at- 
tributable only to what we call chance or caprice. We 
have one or two fair examples of it in our specimen- 
passage; as already pointed out (pp. 39, 43): namely 
Jor and séth, In Anglo-Saxon, the verb faran, ‘fare, 
was in frequent and familiar use in the simple sense of 
‘go’ or ‘pass.’ Gén, ‘go, was also good English, with 
its irregular preterit code, ‘went;’ likewise gangan, 
‘gang,’ with géng, ‘ganged ;? and wendan, ‘turn, wend,’ 
with wende, ‘turned, went. Out of this, as it was 
found, somewhat wasteful provision of words for 
‘going, our later English has made arbitrary selec- 
tion of go and went, dropping the rest—or else, as in 
the case of fare, restricting them to special uses. In 
a similar way, egwus has gone out of use as name for 
‘horse’ in all the descendants of the Latin, and has 
been replaced by caballus, which was originally a word 
of inferior dignity, like our nag; although, in chivalry, 
ete., it has since come to honor enough: so magnus has 
been superseded by grandis, and pulcher by bellus ; and 
so, in French, vulpes has been given up for renard, 
which is the German Leinhart, a proper name, by 
which a fox was at one time popularly called, much as 
we call a dog “Tray.” It may even happen that an 
important word dies out, without provision of any full 
substitute: so the Anglo-Saxon weorthan, corresponding 
to the German werden, ‘become.’ Doubtless the trans- 
fer to its present meaning of become (literally ‘come by, 
get at, get’) caused the oblivion of the older and more 
legitimate synonym; and with this went the possibility 


~ 


162 LOSS OF WORDS AND FORMS. 


of such distinctions as the German makes abundantly 
by means of werden: especially, that of the true passive 
es wird gebrochen, ‘it is getting broken,’ i. e. ‘is under- 
going fracture,’ as against es ¢st gebrochen, ‘it is broken,’ 
i. e. ‘has undergone fracture;’ whence, further, the 
necessity for such awkward, but naturally formed and 
really unavoidable phrases as 7 7s being broken. 

By these means, there is in every language a certain 
amount of obsolescent material, in various stages: some 
words that are only unusual, or restricted to particular 
phrases (like stead, in in stead alone) ; some that belong 
to a particular style, archaic or poetical; some that have 
become strange and unintelligible to ordinary speakers, 
though formerly in every-day use; some that survive 
only in local dialects. And the older records of any 
tongue, if preserved, show words in greater or less num- 
ber that are gone past recovery. 

It is hardly necessary even to spend, in passing, a sin- 
gle word upon the somewhat analogous loss, by words 
and phrases, of their old meanings, although this may 
also involve, in its manner and degree, a reduction of 
the resources of expression. The examples of transfer 
of meaning given in the last chapter have shown also 
sufficiently that the process is not always, though it may 
be usually, an addition of new meanings without an 
abandonment of the old. It may be, too, that the sub- 
stantial sense of a word remains to it, while its acces- 
sory suggestiveness is altered; so when Milton speaks 
of ladies who “ from their eyes rain influence,” we miss 
the whole poetic significance of the line if we do not 
know the astrological allusion it involves. In reading 
older authors, we are constantly liable to this loss or 
misunderstanding, often skimming a mere surface com- 
prehension off that which has a profound meaning, or 


LOSS OF FORMS. 103 


deluding ourselves with a belief that we understand 
where the real sense escapes us. 

A subject of greater consequence and deeper reach 
in language-history is the loss of old distinctions of 
grammatical form. Of this, our illustrative sentence 
brought to light several striking examples, already 
briefly noticed by us. By the wearing off, under the 
prevalent phonetic tendency, of the old infinitive end- 
ing an (Middle English and German ez), our infinitive 
as a verbal form is no longer different from the root of 
verbal inflection. And yet we do not fail to appreciate 
distinctly enough the idea of the form, and have even 
(as we saw) fabricated a new sign zo as a kind of substi- 
tute for the obliterated suffix. Again, having lost all 
such signs of plurality as the final on of ongunnon, we 
no longer distinguish the plural of a verbal tense for- 
mally from the singular except in am and are, was and 
were: yet here, also, the difference made by us between 
singular and plural nouns and pronouns, scantily supple- 
mented by the absence of a personal ending in they love 
as compared with he doves, seems still to keep up in full 
life the old distinction. The se and thd, however, as 
singular and plural respectively, and the former of them 
as specifically masculine (the feminine was sco, and the 
neuter thet), are examples of a class of grammatical dis- 
tinctions which have gone by the board, swept clean 
away, so that we have forgotten that they ever existed: 
namely, the variation of an adjective word for gender 
and number and case. The Anglo-Saxon adjective had 
a fuller inflection than the German, almost as full a one 
as the Greek or Latin; it even had a double one, defi- 
nite and indefinite, like the German; and the language 
still retained the old system of concord, of formal cor- 
respondence between a substantive and its qualifier or 


104 LOSS OF WORDS AND FORMS. 


representative, which, founded on the original identity 
of substantive and adjective, is one of the glories of a 
completely inflective language; but since we have lost 
it, we have never thought of missing or regretting it; 
and no one of us would be easy to convince that, when 
we say good men, there would be anything gained by 
giving the word good a different form from that which 
it has in good man. And yet less, from that which it 
has in good women. For the distinctions of gender 
have been extirpated even in our nouns. To us, the 
name or appellation of a person is masculine or feminine 
only according as the person is male or female; and of 
sex in the lower animals we make very small account ; 
while our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were as much under 
the dominion of that old artificial grammatical distine- 
tion of all the objects of thought as masculine, feminine, 
and neuter, on a basis only in small part coinciding with 
actual sex, as are the Germans now, or as were the 
Greeks and Latins of old: it was one of the original 
and characteristic features of that language from which 
all these, and most of the other tongues of Europe, are 
descended. The French has suffered the same loss only 
partially, having saved the distinction of masculine from 
feminine, but confounded neuter and masculine together 
by the obliteration of their respective marks of differ- 
ence. But also the old scheme of cases in our nouns 
has become a wreck and a remnant, although the dis- 
tinctions on which it is founded are just as necessary 
a part of language as ever. The English has no dative, 
and no accusative except in a few pronouns (him, them, 
whom, etc.) ; the French is still poorer, having not even 
a’ possessive; although it makes in a few pronominal 
words a somewhat evanescent distinction of subject and 
object. We have also nearly parted with our subjune- 


EXCESSIVE LOSS IN ENGLISH. 105 


tive, which in German is as rich in forms as is the 
indicative, 

The English is, in truth, of all the languages of its 
kindred, the one which most remarkably illustrates that 
mode of linguistic change consisting in the loss of for- 
mal grammatical distinction by synthetic means; there 
is no other known tongue which, from having been so 
rich in them, has become so poor; none which has so 
nearly stripped its root-syllables of the apparatus of suf- 
fixes with which they were formerly clothed, and left 
them monosyllabic. All this has come about mainly 
through the instrumentality of the tendency to ease and 
abbreviation, a tendency which in this department of its 
working, especially, makes truly for decay ; the consery- 
ative force, the strictness of traditional transmission, has 
not been sufticient to resist its inroads. Much of the 
loss has been the work of the last few centuries; and 
there is no difficulty in pointing out causes which have 
at least quickened it. When men learn a strange lan- 
guage, by a practical process, they are apt especially to 
make bad work with its endings; if they get the body 
of the word, its main significant part, intelligibly cor- 
rect, they will be content to leave the relations to be 
understood from the connection. This was what helped 
the decay of the Latin tongue, and its reduction, in the 
mouths of Italians, Celts, Iberians, and others, into the 
corrupted and abbreviated shape of the modern Romanic 
dialects; and the irruption into England of the French- 
speaking Normans, and their fusion with the Saxon- 
speaking English, added an appreciable element of 
force to a tendency which was perhaps already sufti- 
ciently marked in the later Anglo-Saxon. 

But it is only in degree that the English differs 
herein from the other languages of its family, and from 


cena 


has 


106 LOSS OF WORDS AND FORMS. 


those of other families. The tendency to abbreviation 
for ease, for economy of effort in expression, is a uni- 
versal and a blind one; destruction lies everywhere in 
its path. The same process which, by a disguising 
fusion and integration of elements once independent, 
makes a word or form, goes straight on to its contrac- 
tion and mutilation—and in early language as certainly, 
though not necessarily so rapidly, as in later. There is 
believed to be hardly anything, if anything at all, ear- 
lier in the structure of our language than the first-per- 
sonal endings, m2 in the singular, mast in the plural. 
Yet these are already economized alterations of some- 
thing still more primitive; the mas, especially, so 
changed that the comparative philologists dispute as 
to its derivation. All that we have left of either of 
them in English is the solitary m of am (for as-mi). 
And every language related with ours has something of 
the same loss to show; and like losses in every other 
department of inflection and of derivation. 

The forms, even of the richest known languages, 
embody and bring to distinct consciousness only a small 
part of the infinity of relations which subsist among 
the objects of thought, and which the mind impliedly 
recognizes, even when it does not direct attention to 
them by expression. Not one of those which are ex- 
pressed, any more than those which have not found em- 
bodiment, is absolutely essential to successful speech. 
When it has attained expression, the mind which con- 
templates it is not dependent upon its audible sign, but 
may even be made carelessly secure by this, and, while 
realizing the idea, permit itself to drop the sign as not 
indispensable. But we may note for our consolation 
that, unless a people is undergoing actual degradation 
in quantity and quality of mental work, it does not 


COMPENSATION FOR LOSS. 107 


lose what it once possessed in the way of inflectional 
apparatus without providing some other and on the 
whole equivalent means of expression. The style of 
expression may become very much changed, without 
any real loss of expressiveness. The downfall of the 
case-system was accompanied by the uprise of the class 
of prepositions ; the loss of pronominal elements in the 
form of personal endings led only to their more extend- 
ed-use as independent words; the impoverishment of 
the scheme of moods and tenses was compensated by 
the introduction of a rich apparatus of auxiliaries, capa- 
ble of expressing nearly all the old distinctions, along 
with a host of new ones. 

This brings us, however, as we have already been 
repeatedly brought, to face the remaining department 
of change of language—namely, the addition of new 
resources of expression; and to that we now turn. 


CHAPTER VII. 


GROWTH OF LANGUAGE: PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND 
FORMS. 


Special importance of this mode of linguistic change; objects attained by 
it. These objects partly gained without external additions; enrich- 
ment, definition, multiplication of meaning in old words. Provision 
of new styles of expression. External additions; borrowing from 
other languages ; its kind and degree; excess of it in English. In- 
vention of new words; onomatopeeia. New words made by combina- 
tion of old ones ; production of forms by this method; its wide reach 
and importance ; internal formative changes really the result of ex- 
ternal additions. Differentiation of the form of a word in different 

uses. Multiplication of the uses of a word by derivative apparatus : 
conversion of one part of speech into another. 


In our examination of the methods of change or 
growth in language, we have finally to consider the sub- 
ject of acquisition of new material, of the means where- 
by the waste incident to phonetic decay is made up, and 
expression for new thought and knowledge provided. 
These means have been already in part set forth or 
alluded to; for all the modes of linguistic growth so 
intertwine and interact that it is impossible to discuss 
any one of them, however succinctly, without taking 
more or less account of the others. : 

This last mode of change, it may be remarked in 
introduction, constitutes in a higher and more essential 


CHANGE OF VALUE OF OLD WORDS. 109 


sense than any of the others the growth of language, 
and ought to bring most distinctly to light the forces 
actually concerned in that growth. 

The general object attained by additions to language > 
is obviously the extension and the improvement of ex- 
pression, supply of representative signs for new knowl- 
edge, amendment in the representation of old knowl- 
edge. But, as we must first observe, these ends are to 
no small extent gained without any apparent change in 
language. In part, by new syntactical combinations of 
the old materials of speech, by putting together old 
words into new sentences: and this is plainly a depart- 
ment of the use of language by which great results are 
won; hosts of new cognitions and deductions are thus 
provided for. And yet, this work cannot go on without 
more or less affecting the inner content of the terms we 
use, changing the limits and even the whole character 
of the conceptions which they represent. If, for exam- 
ple, we say “the sun rises, shedding light and heat on 
the earth,” the sentence is one which (or its, equivalent 
in other languages) might have been uttered, so far as 
concerns the items of which it is made up, at any time 
since the infancy of speech and knowledge: but how 
different the real meaning which it stands for as em- 
ployed by us, and by a modern boor or an ancient sage | 
Lvise to us, as applied to the sun, is only a concession to 
appearances ; we do not care to take the trouble to say 
that the earth has been rolling over till now our spot 
of it comes within reach of the sun’s rays; and as to 
rosing and falling, it is only since Newton discovered 
the great cosmic law of gravitation that we really know 
what the words denote. It is a much shorter time since 
we learned that light and heat are modes of motion of 
matter, apprehended by certain effects which they pro- 


110 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


duce on our sensitive organization. And the transfor- 
mation which sun and earth have undergone in our. 
minds needs no more than an allusion. The example 
is, no doubt, an extreme one; yet it is a perfectly fair, 
even normal, illustration of what becomes in speech of 
one most important part of the new knowledge we 
acquire. This kind of change is ever operating like a 
ferment through the whole material of language, incor- 
porating without outward show the changed apprehen- 
sions, the clearer cognitions, the sharpened distinctions, 
which are the result of gradual intellectual growth. It 
is, as we have called it before, the mind of the com- 
_ munity all the time at work beneath the framework of 
its old language, improving its instruments of expres- 
sion by adapting them to new uses. 

In fact, all the ground over which we went in the 
fifth chapter, treating the alterations of meaning as in- 
dividual changes, of various kind and direction, we 
might properly enough here go over again, having in 
view the purposes which the changes are made to sub- 
serve. That, however, would take too much time ; and. 
we must content ourselves with briefly pointing out cer- 
tain aspects of the subject. 

How great, in the first place, is the sum of enrich- 
ment of language by this means, may be seen by ob- 
serving the variety of meanings belonging to our words. 
If each of them were like a scientific term, limited to a 
definite class of strictly similar things, the number 
which the cultivated speaker now uses would be very 
far from answering his purposes. But it is the cus- 
tomary office of a word to cover, not a point, but a 
territory, and a territory that is irregular, heterogene- 
ous, and variable. A certain noted English lexicog- 
rapher thought he had performed a great feat when he 


te < 


MULTIPLICATION OF MEANINGS. iB: 


had reduced the uses of good to forty varieties, besides 
an insoluble residue of a dozen or two of phrases ; and, 
though we need not accept all his distinctions as valu- 
able, their number at any rate indicates a real condition 
of things. No student who remembers his occasional 
despair as (in early stages of his studies) he has glanced 
over the lists of meanings of Greek and Latin words in 
his dictionaries, trying to find the one that fitted the case 
in hand, will question that foreign words, at any rate, 
have a perplexing variety of signification ; but the case 
is precisely the same with the foreigner who uses an 
English dictionary. It is the duty of the competent 
lexicographer, in any language, to reduce the apparent 


| confusion to order by discovering the nucleus, the natu- 


ral etymological meaning from which all the rest have 
come by change and transfer, and by drawing out the 
others in proper relation to their original and to one an- 
other, so as to suggest the tie of association by which each 
was added to the rest—if he do not find (as is not very | 
rarely the fact) that the tie is doubtful or undiscoverable. 
If we were to count in our words only those degrees of 
difference of meaning for which in other cases separate 


‘provision of expression is made, the 100,000 English 


words would doubtless be found equivalent to a million 
or two. As an extreme example of what this mode of 
enrichment can do, there is in existence one highly eul- 
tivated tongue, the Chinese, all the growth of which 
has had to be by differentiation of meaning, since it. re- 
jects all external additions ; and it has only about 1,500 
words: what a host of discordant and hardly connect- 
able meanings each word is compelled to bear may be 
easily imagined. 
The particular mode of transfer by which new ex- 
pression is most abundantly won is the figurative (as set 
p | 


112 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


forth and illustrated in the last chapter but one). Dut, 
rich as are its contributions to the absolute needs of ex- 
pression, especially in the department of intellectual 
and relational language, they are by no means limited 
to that. The mind not only has a wonderful facility in 
_ catching resemblances and turning them to account, but 
it takes a real creative pleasure in the exercise, and de- 
rives from it desirable variety and liveliness of style. 
The power is strikingly illustrated in the case of men 
whose life-occupations run in restricted lines, and who 
have little general culture; when they come to talk 
upon matters less familiar, they see constant analogies 
between these and their staple subjects of thought, and 
their discourse is redolent of the “shop.” So especially 
the sailor talks as if all the world were a ship, and with 
a piquancy and raciness which, as illustrated in the nau- 
tical stories, is full of charm to us land-lubbers; and 
many a term or phrase of this origin has passed into 
our general English tongue. And if we would see how 
far the phraseology of the mine and the card-table can 
be made to go in figurative substitution for ordinary 
speech, we may read, in Mark Twain’s “ Roughing It” 
(chap. xlvii.), that amusing (and, in this aspect, instruc- 
tive) account of the interview between the preacher and 
the gambler who wants to get his late exemplary part- 
ner decently buried. For a more dignified example, 
take the constant recurrence of the Vedic poets to the 
cattle-yard and the pasture for the staple of their com- 
parisons, and for the suggestion of many a term used 
later, without any sense of a figure involved in it, to 
express human conditions. So far as this is odd or un- 
dignified, it forms the largest element of what we call 
“slang,” and we frown upon it; and properly enough ; 
but yet it is only the excess and abuse of a tendency 


——* 


CONVENTIONAL PHRASES, 113 


which is wholly legitimate, and of the highest value, in 
the history of speech. It seeks relief from the often 
oppressive conventionality, even insipidity, of words 
worn out by the use of persons who have put neither 
knowledge nor feeling into them, and which seem inca- 
pable of expressing anything that is real. In the exu- 
berance of mental activity, and the natural delight of 
language-making, slang is a necessary evil; and there 
are grades and uses of slang whose charm no one need 
be ashamed to feel and confess ; it is like reading a nar- 
rative in a series of rude but telling pictures, instead of 
in words. 

A meaningless conventionality, to be sure, has also 
its special uses, as in the forms of social intercourse, 
where we are sometimes called upon to disguise instead 
of disclosing our thoughts by speech. To take an ex- 
ample or two of the simplest kind—we say “how do you 
do?” to an acquaintance, but should feel imposed upon 
if he answered by detailing all the symptoms of his 
health; we begin a letter to one whom we really detest 
with “my dear sir,” and at the end declare ourselves his 
“obedient servant,” though we should resent a single 
word from him which bore the semblance of.a command. 
And so in many other cases: to devise more sincere 
phrases would seem blunt and odd, an unbecoming in- 
trusion of our personality. Then, again, there are sub- 
jects of decency or delicacy, with reference to which we 
have to pick our expressions very carefully, if we would 
not offend or disgust. It is one of the most striking 
illustrations possible of the dominion which words have 
won over our thoughts, that we will tolerate in indirect, 
figurative, merely suggestive expression what would be 
repulsive in direct statement. Here, by an effect con- 
trary to that which we noticed above, a term perhaps 


114 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


becomes after a time, by frequent use, too directly sig- 
nificant, and we have to devise a new one, less lively. 

Thus, independently of any marked increase of 
knowledge and multiplication of conceptions, as well as 
in connection with this, the instrument of expression 1s 
continually undergoing alteration for the better, by be- 
ing applied to more varied and defter modes of use. 
The same methods of increase serve both the one pur- 
pose and the other. We have perhaps already given 
sufficient attention, in the fifth chapter, to that most 
general and grandest of movements of signification, 
which carries words over from a more material and sub- 
stantial value toward one that is more conceptual and 
formal, in its two departments of the making of intel- 
lectual expression and the production of form-words— 
in the former, turning more to the uses of new thought; 
in the latter, more toward the completion of the ex- 
pression of old thought ; and we may proceed to take 
up the other and more conspicuous part of growth, con- 
sisting in external additions to language, the accession 
of new words to the vocabulary. 

And we may best begin with that particular mode 
of external increase which is the most extraneous of all 
—namely, the bringing into a language of words bor- 
rowed out of other languages. Borrowing, in greater 
or less degree, is well-nigh universally resorted to ; there 
is hardly a dialect in the world, of which the speakers 
ever come in contact with those of another dialect, 
which has not taken something out of that other. What 
comes most easily after this fashion is names for articles 
and institutions of foreign growth, which, on making 
their acquaintance, and deeming them worthy of intro- 
duction or adoption, we often find it convenient to call 
by the names given them by their former possessors. 


FOREIGN WORDS. 115 


So the banane is a tropical fruit, with its own tropical 
title; and the nations of continental Europe mostly call 
anand, for the same reason, the fruit for which we have 
chosen to provide the more native appellation of pine- 
apple—i. e. such an apple as, j udging from its cones, a 
pine might bear if it tried to be an apple-tree. So also 
with the institution of the tabu, of which the Polyne- 
sian name has fairly won a place in more than one 
European tongue. <A language like ours—since we 
come in contact with nearly all the nations of the world, 
and draw in to ourselves whatever we find of theirs that 
can be made useful to us, and since even our culture de- 
rives from various sources—comes to contain specimens 
from dialects of very diverse origin. Thus, we have 
religious words from the Hebrew, as sabbath, seraph, 
Jubilee y certain old-style scientific terms from the 
Arabic, as algebra, alkali, zenith, cipher, besides a con- 
siderable heterogeneous list, like lemon, sugar (ultimate- 
ly Sanskrit), sherbet, magazine ; from the Persian, cara- 
van, chess, shawl, and even a word which has won. so 
familiar and varied use as check ; from Hindi, ealico 
and chintz, punch and toddy ; from Chinese, tea and 
nankeen ; from American Indian languages, canoe and 
moccasin, guano and potato, sachem and caucus, Some 
of these are specimens out of tolerably long lists; and 
there are yet longer from sundry of the modern Euro- 
pean languages, as the Spanish and Italian. All to- 
gether, they do not make up any considerable propor- 
tion of English speech; but they have for us a high 
theoretical importance, as casting light upon the general 
process of names-giving, of which we shall treat more 
particularly in the next chapter. It ig by no process of 
organic growth, assuredly, that we put a certain title 
upon a certain thing because some far-off community, of 


116 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


which we know little and for which we care less, gave 
it that title; yet this makes, when once in use, Just as 
good English as the words that belong to the very old- 
est Saxon families, or that “came in with the Con- 
queror.” 

This last expression, however, reminds us that there 
is another kind and rate of borrowing in which our lan- 
guage indulges, more or less in common with others. 
All the leading nations of Europe have received their 
culture and their religion, directly or indirectly, from 
Greece and Rome. Some of them, indeed—as the vari- 
ous tribes of Italy, the Celts of Gaul, the Celtiberians of 
the Spanish peninsula—took so much from Rome that, 
along with the rest, they accepted also her speech, in 
mass, and now talk a nearly pure Latinic dialect. With 
the others, there followed only a result akin with that 
which we have been noticing above ; in connection with 
new ideas and institutions, they took the names by 
which these were known to their more original possess- 
ors. Thus there came to be numerous Latin and Greek 
words in the Germanic, the Slavonic, and the Celtic 
tongues. Not a few of them occur in the oldest Anglo- 
Saxon; and they abound in the German vocabulary, 
even in those parts of it which have an original aspect. 
The dependence of Europe on the classical sources for 
knowledge, arts, and sciences, continued long. Latin 
was everywhere read and written by the learned, almost 
as the only language worthy of such high uses; and 
even now its study is a pervading element in education. 
This kept fully alive the habit of resorting to the stores 
of Latin expression to satisfy all those needs of the 
learned which the more regular growth of the popular 
speech did not supply. In a certain way, it was easier 
for those modern tongues which are themselves derived 


BORROWING OF FOREIGN WORDS. 11% 


from the Latin to do this than for others ; but we must 
not estimate their advantage too highly, observing how 
little we ourselves borrow from the Anglo-Saxon, or 
from any other Germanic language. The Latin and 
Greek alone have occupied such a position that all Eu- 
rope could resort to them for the enrichment of its mul- 
tifarious speech. In other parts of the world, other 
languages have stood in a like place. To the scores of 
tribes and nations of discordant speech in India, the 
Sanskrit has long been the sacred and literary dialect, 
and its literature the fountain of higher thought and 
knowledge ; and all the cultivated tongues of modern 
India have come to be full of Sanskrit words, as the 
European tongues are of Latin. The Persians, a thou- 
sand years and more ago, were forced to receive a new 
religion and constitution at the handsof their Arab con- 
querors, and modern Persian is almost more Arabic 
than Persian. The Turks burst into Persia as a wild 
uncultivated horde, with nearly everything to learn save 
war and plunder; and their present written style is 
more crowded with Persian and Arabic than the most 
extreme Johnsonese with Latin. The J apanese made. 
themselves, fifteen centuries since, the pupils of the 
Chinese; and they have absorbed the Chinese vocabu- 
lary almost bodily into their own language. 

The English, then, is not at all peculiar in its bor- 
rowing freely from other tongues to enrich its vocabu- 
lary ; it is merely peculiar among European languages 
for the extent of its borrowing from tongues only re- 
motely akin with itself. A trustworthy estimate of the 
derivation of the words found in our great dictionaries 
makes nearly five sevenths of them to be of classical 
derivation, and only about two sevenths native Ger- 
manic: the sum of derivatives from other quarters— 


118 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


only a thousand or two—being of no account in such 
an estimate. Of course, the words do not enter into 
the ordinary combinations of practical use in any such 
proportion as this, because our commonest terms, the 
pulk of the material of ordinary speech and nearly all 
its machinery, are Germanic. In the list of words used 
by Milton, for example, full two thirds are classical ; 
but in a page anywhere of Milton’s poetry the classical — 
efement is only ten to thirty per cent.; and even in 
Johnson’s style its proportion is but little greater. © 

For this preponderance, in one aspect, of the bor- 
rowed material in English speech, there are easily as- 
signable reasons. The Norman invasion, leading to a 
long antagonism and final fusion of a French-speaking 
with a Saxon-speaking race, brought in by violence, as 
it were, a great store of French words, of Latin origin, 
and thus made it comparatively easy to bring in without 
violence a great many more. And the deadening of the 
native processes of composition and derivation and in- 
flection, caused in part by the same great historical 
event, made the language more incapable of meeting 
out of its own resources any great call for new expres- 
sion. So, when the pressing exigencies of the last cen- 
tury or two, almost unexampled in their urgency, arose, 
the resource of borrowing, already much availed of, was 
drawn upon almost to excess. When a community is 
living quietly on, with no marked accumulation of the 
fruits of mental activity, ruminating its old conceptions 
and slowly elaborating new, the purely natural increase, 
proceeding slowly and unconsciously from the great body 
of speakers, will be likely to serve all needs. But when 
science and art and philosophy are making rapid ad- 
vances, when new branches of knowledge are springing 
up, one after another, each calling for a whole vocabulary 


BORROWING OF LEARNED WORDS. eed 


of new terms, when infinite numbers of new facts and 
new objects are coming to notice, then the native modes 
of growth, of even the most fertile language, will. be 
taxed beyond their capacity to provide a nomenclature 
for all. The call is in very great part for technical vo- 
cabularies, words for learned use; and the learned find 
what they want most conveniently in the learned lan- 
guages. ‘T’hey gain in addition the practical advantage 
that all the inheritors and continuers of a common civ- 
ilization thus possess something like a common dialect, 
in which to denominate those conceptions in which they 
have a joint interest closer than that which they have 
with the mass of their countrymen. Our five sevenths 
of classical material are mainly words of learned use 
only, which the young child does not acquire in order 
to “speak English,” and which the uneducated man 
never learns; a host of them are of rare occurrence 
even in books. But any one of them may come, under 
the conditions of practical life, to be as familiar as 
material of less artificial origin: cases of this kind are 
gas, Lhursday and its kin, dahlia, petroleum, telegraph, 
photograph. 

There are degrees of kind as well as of extent in 
the process of borrowing. What is most easily taken - 
out of the stores of one language to be added to those of 
another is the names and epithets of things, nouns and 
adjectives ; verbs, much less easily ; particles, hardly 
at all; apparatus of derivation, prefixes and suffixes, 
very sparingly ; and apparatus of inflection, endings of 
declension and conjugation, least of all, Even English 
is nearly unmixed in its grammar ; its articulating: parts, 
the elements that bind ideas together and show their 
relations, that make sentences, are almost exclusively of 
Anglo-Saxon origin. For this reason, notwithstanding 


ae 


Hw men 


120 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


the preponderance of classical material in its wider vo- 
cabulary, the English is still rightly reckoned a Ger- 
manic language. 

Of the out-and-out invention of new words, lan- 
guage in the course of its recorded history (for we do 


' not now speak of its initial stage) presents only rare 


examples. Sometimes, however, a case occurs like that 
of gas, already noticed as having been devised by an 
ancient chemist, as artificial appellation for a condition 
of existence of matter which had not before been so 
distinctly apprehended as to seem to require a name. 
Along with it, he proposed ddas for that property of the 
heavenly bodies whereby they regulate the changes of 
time: this, however, was too purely fanciful to recom- 
mend itself to general use, and it dropped out of sight 
and was forgotten, while the other came to honor.’ 
More fr equent than such words as this, which only 
by a lucky hit gain life and a career, are those in which 
the attempt has, been made in a rude way to imitate the 
sounds of nature: as when the cuckoo and the pewee 
and the toucan were named from their notes; or as in 
some of the descriptive words like crack and crash, hiss 
and buzz, which are by no means all old, but have been 
made, or shaped over into a pictorial form, within no 
long time. We call such words onomatopwias, literally 
‘name-makings,’ because the Greeks did so: they could 
conceive of no way in which absolutely new language- 
material should be produced except by such imitation. 
We pass now to notice another process, whereby 
there comes into being for the uses of expression ma- 
terial which is only in a certain sense new, but which 
nevertheless furnishes notable enrichment to speech, 
and in more than one department; a process which the 
eeneral history of language shows to be more important 


COMPOUND WORDS. 121 


than any other. It is the composition of words, the 
putting two independent elements together to form a 
single designation. Our illustrative passage furnished 
us one or two examples of it: namely, veste-dwg, ‘ rest- 
day,’ and leorning-enihtas, ° learning-knights,’ i. e. ‘ pu- 
pus.’ Such a word is logically an abbreviated descrip- 
tive phrase, with the signs of relation, the ordinary 
inflections or connectives, omitted ; the two main ideas 
are put side by side, and the mind left to infer their re- 
lation to one another from the known circumstances of 
the case. It is so far an abnegation, for the sake of 
brevity and convenience, of the advantages of a lan- 
guage which has formative elements and form-words. 
The undefined relation may be of every variety : thus, 
a headache is a pain in the head; a head-dress, a dress 
Jor the head; a headland, a point of land comparable 
to a head; a headsman, a man for cutting off heads ; 
headway, motion in the direction of the head (of any 
animal but man); thus, also, a steamboat is a boat pro- 
pelled by the force of steam; a railroad or railway is 
aroad lad with rails; a buttercup or butterfly is a cup 
or fly having the color of butter: and so forth. Such 
a word, again, is formally characterized by a unity of 
accent; this is the chief outer sign of combination, 
binding the word together—although it is not enough 
of itself to make a compound; else the man and have 
gone and shall go and their like would be compounds 
also. Nothing is simpler or more common than for a 
language to form such compounds. Yet their frequency 
is very different in different languages: the Sanskrit 
abuses the liberty of making them; the Greek, the 
Latin, the German, are examples of tongues which use 
them abundantly, yet with wise moderation ; the French 
has most nearly lost the power of. their production. 


122 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


Though in English they are far from being as numer- 
ous as in German, our speech is pretty full of them ; 
the words quoted above may serve as examples of what 
is done in this way to increase the resources of expres- 
sion. How ready the language-users are to forget the 
source of the compound, to lose the separate impression 
of its constituent words, to use it as a unitary sign for 
the conception to which it is attached, and then to dis- 
euise and integrate it by phonetic change, has been al- 
ready pointed out, and need not be here further dwelt 
on or exemplified. Buta most important department 
of its action is in a direction which calls for a little ad- 
ditional illustration. 

Among the many adjectives which we sometimes 
combine with nouns to form compound adjectives, there 
are those which, in virtue of their meaning and conse- 
quent wide applicability, we use with special frequency, 
forming considerable classes of compounds with a com- 
mon final element. A typical instance is full, German 
voll, which is added to nouns enough, and in a suffi- 
ciently general sense, to be made a kind of suffix, its 
own specific force being lost: dutiful and plentiful 
are equivalent to duteous and plenteous. Its opposite 
is less, German los; not our adjective less, but, as the 
German indicates and as the older forms of our lan- 
guage prove, loose; here the originally independent 
word has been so disguised by phonetic change as to 
have become absolutely an adjective suffix. Ly (of godly, 
homely, etc.) has been already fully enough explained 
(p. 41), as coming, by a different sort of phonetic change, 
from like. And a certain case-form of this compounded 
adjective, we saw, was by a change of office converted 
into a nearly universal adverbial suflix: thus, truly, 
plentifully. The French adverbial ending men is in 


GENESIS OF GRAMMATICAL FORMS. 123 


a 


like manner from the Latin ablative mente + grande- 
ment, * grandly,’ is by origin grandi mente, ‘ with great 
mind.’ Our some in wholesome (German sam in heil- 
sam) is altered from older sam, and identical with same 
in the sense of ‘like.’ There are noun-forming suffixes, 
also, which own a like origin. The plainest cases among 
them, perhaps, are ship, German schaft, in lordship, 
herrschaft, and their like; and dom, German thum, in 
kingdom, wisdom, kinigthum, weisthum: the former 
comes from shape, the latter from doom. We have 
glanced above at a case or two of verbal tense-making 
after the same fashion. The don of hyngredon (plural 
of hyngrede, p. 42) was in Gothic dédum, an evident 
auxiliary, our did, which, at a time very early in the 
common history of the Germanic dialects (for it is 
found in them all, though not in any even of their 
nearest relatives), was added to some verbal word to 
make a verbal form, with the final result that the two 
became fused together into one, even as we now add it 
to a verbal word, the infinitive, to make a verbal phrase, 
L do love, I did love, only without fusion. Quite par- 
allel with this is the fusion of the present of the verb ‘ to 
have’ with the infinitive in the Romanic languages, to 
make their modern future, as donner-ai, ‘I shall give,’ 
when compared with our verbal phrase Z have to ge, 
its unfused equivalent. Abundant traces of the same 
sort of composition, fusion, and resulting production of 
a new verbal form, are to be seen in the Latin, whose 
imperfect in bam, future in 60, and perfect in wz or VW, 
are generally acknowledged: to contain as their endings 
certain forms of the verb which in our language is the 
substantive verb ¢o be. And even the Greek and San- 
skrit have like compound forms to show, of earlier and 
later date: one, the future in Skt. syimi, Gr. oo, is 


124 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


believed to go back to the primitive period of linguis- 
tic growth in our family of languages. _ 

These are some of the plainest among the numerous 
examples which might be brought forward, going to 
show that suffixes of derivation and inflection are made 
out of independent words, which, first entering into 
union with other words by the ordinary process of com- 
position, then gradually lose their independent charac- 
ter, and finally come to be, in a more or Jess mutilated 
and disguised form, mere subordinate elements, or in- 
dicators of relation, in more elaborate structures. The 
auxiliary processes of oblivion and attenuation and 
transfer of meaning, and of disguise and abbreviation 
of form, are simply the same here as in all the other 
cases we have treated; they are essential parts of the 
making of forms; for so long as the independent word, 
_inits individual shape and meaning, is plainly recognized 
in the combination, so long does this remain a compound 
rather than a form: our fw/, for example (German vo//), 
is not so truly a suflix as ly (ch), because the indepen- 
dent adjective is too apparent in it; a disguising altera- 
tion is needed to help make an affix—a “ formative ele- 
ment,” as it is properly termed, in distinction from the 
“radical element,” the root or base, or the crude-form, 
to which it is appended. 

Now it is by no means all, or even the largest part, 
of our existing formative elements, suffixes of deriva- 
tion and inflection, of which the origin in this method 
can be actually proved; and if we are to believe noth- 
ing respecting language which does not rest on positive 
evidence, we shall never make the principle of combi- 
nation go far toward explaining the growth of language. 
But it would be highly unreasonable to demand every- 
where such proof. The disguising effect of the two 


GENESIS OF GRAMMATICAL FORMS. 125 


principles of change which bear their part in every new 
formation is such that after a time we may be able only 
to guess, or not even that, at its origin. We could not 
explain the dy from modern English alone; we could 
not be certain as to the d of loved without the help of 
the Gothic ; nor as to the cw of the Greek future with- 
out the Sanskrit. Every period of linguistic life, with 
its constantly progressing changes of form and meaning, 
wipes out a part of the intermediates which connect a 
derived element with its original. There are a plenty 
of items of word-formation in even the modern Ro- 
manic languages which completely elude explanation. 
Mere absence of evidence, then, will not in the least 
justify us in assuming the genesis of an obscure form 
to be of a wholly different character from that which is 
obvious or demonstrable in other forms. The presump- 
tion is wholly in favor of the accordance of the one 
with the other; it can only be repelled by direct and 
convincing evidence. And, in actual fact, linguistic 
study does not bring to light any such evidence; its 
trustworthy results go rather to prove that the combi- 
nation of independent element with element has been 
from the beginning, in the languages of our family, the 
fertile and the sufticient method of new external growth, 
has furnished the needed supply of fresh material, which 
then, under the action of the other processes, has been 
applied to meet the needs of expression. We shall 
have, by and by, to review in brief the history of early 
development of these languages, as explained by the 
comparative philologists upon the principle here stated. 

But a part of our forms, derivative and inflectional : 
appear to be made by internal modification rather than 
external addition. We say boy and boys, indeed, but we 
also say man and men; we say love and loved, but also 


126 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


read and réad ; and then there is that wide-reaching and 
most important phenomenon in Germanic language, 
the variation of radical vowel, in large classes of words 
like sing, sang, sung, and song; like break, broke, and 
breach ; like bind, bound, bond, and band. The Greek 
has a kindred but less conspicuous change in a consider- 
able body of verbs and verbal derivatives like Aero, 
édurov, AéAouTTAa; like tpémw, Erparrov, TéTpogha, TpeT TOs, 
tpamné, tpomros; etc. These are seeming violations of 
the principle of new growth by external addition, by 
combination ; if, however, they can be shown to be, 
after all, its results, they will rather lend it a strong 
support. 

Let us begin with réad réad, as the most recent and 
the plainest case. In the Anglo-Saxon, this verb and 
the little class that go like it had no such difference of 
vowel between present and preterit; and they had in 
the preterit the same added ending as other “ regular ” 
or new verbs: the forms were rvedan, ‘réad, redde, 
‘réad.’? But here came in the phonetic principle of easy 
utterance: the penult of radde had a long vowel be- 
fore a doubled consonant ; it was lightened by shorten- 
ing the vowel—a proceeding so customary in all Ger- 
manic speech that it has led to the frequent orthographic 
device of marking a vowel as short by doubling the con- 
sonant after it. When, then, in the further course of 
abbreviation, by loss of final vowels, both forms were 
reduced to monosyllables, the double pronunciation of 
the final consonant was lost, and the difference of vow- 
els was left alone to mark the difference of tense. The 
case is, on the one hand, analogous with léave left, feel 
félt, ete., where there is a shortening of the vowel for 
a like cause, the occurrence of two consonants after it, 
but where the consonant group has been preserved ; 


APPARENT INTERNAL INFLECTION. 127 


and, on the other hand, it is analogous with se¢, pué, and 
their like, which have also lost their preterit ending, 
but, having a short vowel in the present, never estab- 
lished a difference between the two tenses, and so have 
the same form in both. The distinction of réad réad, 
lead léd, ete., is thus a mere phonetic accident ; a final 
turning to account, for the purposes of grammatical ex- 
pression, of a difference which arose secondarily, as the 
unforeseen consequence of an external addition, when 
that addition had been lost by phonetic decay. Such 
a distinction is wont to be termed “inorganic,” as dis- 
tinguished from one like doved from love, which answers 
just the purpose for which it was at first intended. 

As for man men, that is a case of what in German 
is termed wmlaut, or “modification of vowel,” a phe- 
nomenon of wide range in Germanic language, but of 
which the results are reduced almost to a minimum in 
English. It was originally the alteration of an a-sound 
to an e-sound by the assimilating influence of a follow- 
ing @ (see above, p. 71): a change, therefore, which de- 
pended on the character of the case-ending, and had 
nothing whatever to do with the distinction of plural 
from singular; it was even the fact in Anglo-Saxon 
that one of the singular cases (dative) had e, and two of 
the plural cases (genitive and dative) had a But, after 
exercising their assimilative influence, the endings were 
lost (like the second d which had shortened the long 
vowel of read); and the dative and genitive (plural) 
were lost as separate forms; and so man and men were 
left to stand over against one another as singular and 
plural. And because this difference of vowel was suf- 
ficient to distinguish the two numbers, linguistic usage 
did not go on, as in a multitude of other cases (e. g. in 
ears for ear: see p. 38), to add an s for the same pur- 


128 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


pose. Here, again, is an application to the purposes of 
grammatical distinction of a difference which was acci- 
dental, inorganic, in its origin. 

To enter into a full discussion and explanation of 
the remaining case, the ablaut, or variation of radical 
vowel, in bind, bound, band, bond, and their like, would 
take a great deal more time than we can afford to it, 
and would bring up some obscure and difficult points, 
as to which the opinions of investigators are still at 
variance. But we should find in it nothing different, as 
regards the essential principles involved, from what the 
other two examples have furnished us. ‘The preterit, 
the participle, the derivative noun, had originally their 
external formative elements—the first its reduplication, 
as in cano cecini, tpéra tétpopa, haldan hachald ; 
the other two their endings of derivation—there was 
no difference of vowel. And when the difference first 
appeared, it was not significant, any more than that of 
felt from feel, of (German) ménner from mann ; it 
was developed under purely euphonic influences; it 
involves, in its various manifestations, the weakening 
of an original a-sound, the strengthening of an @ or 
u-sound when accented, and a fusion of the preterit re- 
duplication with the root. There is nothing here to 
call for the admission of an exception to the general 
rule that, in our languages, forms are made by an exter- 
nal accretion of elements which were at first indepen- 
dent words. 

The fact, however, is here brought to light, and con- 
stitutes an addition of some importance to the means 
of enrichment of language, that accidental differences 
are seized upon and turned to account by being put to 
new uses. A word thus, as it were, divides into two or 
more, each of which then leads an independent life. 


DIVISION OF A WORD INTO TWO OR MORE. 129 


Some notable examples of this we have seen already : 
the Anglo-Saxon dn has become in English the numeral 
one and the article an or a; of has become off and of ; 
also and as, like German also and als, are representa- 
tives of one original; so fore and for, like German 
vor, fiir, ver ; through and thorough are a very peculiar 
divorcement, with accompanying conversion of an ad- 
verb into an adjective ; outer and utter are two sides of 
one word and one idea; cénduct and condi:ct are speci- 
mens of a large class of couplets, distinguished by ac- 
cent alone ; minite and minute (minit) are a convenient 
distinction, which we might wish we had also for the 
two uses of second ; and genteel, gentle, and gentile are 
all alike the Latin gentilis, and in their variety of mean- 
_ ing, as well as in their common derivation from a root 
signifying simply ‘to be born,’ are a striking example 
of the possibilities of linguistic mutation. 

The method of growth out of the native resources 
of a language, by putting its materials together into new 
combinations, and so making new names for things, and 
sometimes new forms, is of course one of much slower 
operation than the importation of learned and technical 
terms from abroad, especially when this is pushed to 
such an extreme as in our speech. Above all, in the 
making of forms, its progress is almost insensibly grad- 
ual, and its results are few. It cannot well take less 
than generations to pass 'an element originally indepen- 
dent through those changes of shape and meaning 
which it must undergo in order to become a suffix. As 
a set-off against this, to be sure, the results, once at- 
tained, are of very wide application. When, for exam- 
ple, did is worked down into a preterit ending, we ap- 
ply it to make past tenses for all our new verbs, however 
many they may be; and there are few adjectives in the 


. 130 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


language which may not form their corresponding ad- 
verb with Zy, little as most of them would endure com- 
position with dike. But if we take into consideration 
the whole long course of life of a language, extending 
- through thousands of years, and also the sum of human 
languages in all parts of the world, few of which, com- 
paratively, are placed in circumstances to derive much 
advantage from borrowing, it is of the utmost impor- 
tance. It is capable of providing, along with variation 
of meaning, and variation of form under phonetic 
change, all the new material which is needed for the 
ordinary development of expression; it is also able, 
with the same help, to transform by degrees the gram- 
matical character of a language, adding new distinctions, 
and supplying the place of those that are lost Le the 
wearing-out processes. 

In connection with this, we have to note one more 
important department of the means of enrichment of a 
language: namely, the capacity, belonging to every 
tongue that has any share of an inflective character, of 
multiplying the applicabilities, and so the usefulness, of 
its material, new or old, by adding formative elements 
to it, by putting it through the processes of inflection 
and derivation. By no means all the formative appara- 
tus which a language possesses can be turned to use in 
this way; the English distinctions, for example, of he 
and him and they and them, of man and men, of give 
and gave, of sit and set, of true and truth, of land and 
landscape, though inflective, are dead, and we can no 
longer make new forms by their help. But to any noun 
which we import we may add an s for the possessive 
and plural, as telegraphs ; from any verb we can make 
a little scheme of inflectional forms, as telegraphest, tele- 
graphs, telegraphed (pret. and part.), telegraphing (part. 


CHANGE OF ONE PART OF SPEECH INTO OTHERS. 18 


and infin.). Then we have our suftixes for turning a 
noun into an adjective, as telegraphic; a number of 
these, as ful, less, ous, ish, y, are still sufficiently alive 
to admit of practical application. Then, besides that 
we can turn any adjective, on occasion, into a noun—as 
the good, the beautiful, and the true—we have a suffix 
ness, of very wide applicability, for abstracts. And the 
ly will convert almost any adjective into an adverb, as 
telegraphically. The verb, too, has its instruments of 
mutation: telegraph, for instance, makes telegrapher 
and telegraphist and telegraphy. And, on the other 
hand, there are means of turning nouns and adjectives 
into verbs: we say harden and roughen, and revolution- 
ize and demoralize, and so on. This last is in all lan- 
_ guages the principal means whereby the stock of verbal 
expression is increased, and new starting-points are ob- 
tained for further development: such “ denominative” 
verbs, as they are called, abound in every member of 
our family, in every period of its history. All depends 
upon the power which language has of treating its stock 
of formative elements in the same way as its more ma- 
terial elements. Let a certain modificatory syllable, 
however reduced to formative value, once come to occur 
in forms enough to get itself distinctly associated in the 
minds of speakers with a certain modification of -mean- 
ing, and it is further applied when that modification 
needs to be expressed, just as naturally as a connective 
or an auxiliary is similarly used.. A notable example of 
how an element of extraneous origin can come into a 
language, and by slow extension finally work its way up 
to such a use, is afforded by ze and ism and ist, which, 
though ultimately of Greek origin, and imported by us 
through the French, have made themselves part of our 
living apparatus of derivation, and are even abused, in 


132 PRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS AND FORMS. 


a half-artificial and affected way, by low speakers and 
- writers, to the formation of such monstrosities as walk- 
ist, hair-cuttist. 

It is of high importance, if we would understand 
the structure of any language, to distinguish its living 


apparatus of inflection and derivation from that which - 


is only recognizable in its older words as having been 
formerly alive. And it is in great part by the deaden- 
ing of such means of multiplication of expression that 
a language like ours gains its peculiar character, as 
a prevailingly analytical speech. Each tongue has its 
own way in this regard: the I'rench is poorer even 
than English in apparatus of derivation ; the Slavonic 
tongues, as the Russian, are vastly richer than either 
Germanic or Romanic. 

The English retains a peculiar relic of its former 
capacities as an inflective language, in its power to turn 
one part of speech directly into another, without using 
any external sign of the transfer. The tongues of our 
family had in old time a formal means of making “ de- 
nominative” verbs out of nouns and adjectives; we 
have mainly worn out and lost the means, but we make 
the verbs almost more freely than ever: thus, to head 
an army, to foot a stocking, to hand a plate, to toe a 
mark, to mind a command, to eye a foe, to book a pas- 
senger, to chair a candidate, to table a resolution, to 
stone a martyr, to scalp an enemy: and so on indefi- 
nitely. The examples show that the relation of the 
action to the conception expressed by the noun is of the 
greatest possible variety, determined in each case only 
by its known conditions, as apprehended by the mind 
of speaker and hearer. An equally peculiar capacity is 
that of transmuting without ceremony a noun into an 
adjective: thus we say a gold watch, while the French- 


CHANGE OF ONE PART OF SPEECH INTO: OTHERS. 133 


man must say ‘a watch of gold, and the German ‘a 
golden watch,’ or else, by actual composition, ‘a gold- 
watch ;’ so also, a steam mill, as against the French ‘a 
mill by steam’ and the German ‘a steam-mill;’ so a 
China rose; and so on. This comes from a relaxation 
of the bonds of composition ; the division, as it were, 
of a loose compound like gold-mine into its parts, and 
an attribution to the name itself in separate use of an 
oftice rightfully belonging to it only when it loses its in- 
dependence by union with another. This chan geableness 
of office is something very different from the original 
indefiniteness of uninflected languages. Our apprehen- 
sion of the different office of verb, noun, and adjective 
is kept clear enough by the numerous words which have 
only one and not another of these characters; we pre- 
serve the distinction even after abandoning its sign; and 
thus have by inheritance more of the power of increas- 
ing the resources of expression than makes any outward 
show in our language. 


aS 


CHAPTER VII. 


SUMMARY : THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


Review of the processes of change; their contribution to name-making. 
Degrees of reflectiveness in name-making. Antecedence of the con- 
ception to its sign; illustrations ; examination of arguments used 
against this view. Sources of the material of names; artificiality 
of the tie between name and idea, Etymological inquiries; char- 
acter of the reasons for names; a science of morphology. Force 
concerned in name-making ; the linguistic faculty; false views and 
their grounds examined. Part taken by the community in the pro- 
cess; its relation to the action of individuals. 


We have now finished our compendious review of 
the individual processes—at least, the leading ones—of 
which is made up the growth of languages like ours. 
In order to understand the. historical movement of any 
language at a given period, we need to analyze it into 
such parts as these, and to see how, separately and to- 
gether, they are working ; to note the kind and degree 
of activity of each, and trace, if possible, the causes 
that determine their difference. In our exposition and 
illustration, we have had in view especially their agency 
in the recent and present growth of English; and we 
cannot spend the time, nor is it necessary, to take any 
more notice of their different operation in other lan- 
guages than we have already incidentally done, and 
shall have occasion in the same way to do hereafter. 


ei 


CONSCIOUS NAME-MAKING. ; 135 


We go on, rather, to consider certain general principles, — 
mainly derivable in the way of inference from the de- 
tails we have had before us, and bearing upon the gen- 
eral process of name-giving, or the provision of signs 
for conceptions. The other departments of linguistic 
change, as we have already seen, are of comparatively 
subordinate importance and not difticult of explanation ; 
but to understand fully the means whereby language 
compasses the expression of whatever calls for expres- 
sion is to comprehend the essential nature of linguistic 
growth, and even that of language itself. 

We will begin by noticing that a part of the name- 
giving process, at any rate, is easy enough to under- 
stand ; it goes on in the broadest daylight. When a 
human being is born into the world, custom, founded 
in convenience, requires that he havea name; and those 
who are responsible for his existence furnish the re- 
quired adjunct, according to their individual tastes, 
which are virtually a reflection of those of the com- 
munity in which they live. English-speaking parents 
do not give a Chinese or a Sioux name, nor vice versd i 
the saint to whom his natal or christening day is sacred, 
& conspicuous public character, a relation from whom 
expectations are entertained, or something else equally 
unessential, directs their choice; no matter what, so 
long as the individual is named, and with such a name 
that neither the community who call him by it, nor he 
himself later, shall revolt and insist on another appella- 
tion. Such an act as this may seem to have little to do 
with general language ; but that depends upon circum- 
stances: the proper name Julius has ended in our call- 
ing a month July; the nickname Cesar has given the 
title to the heads of two great nations, Germany and 
Russia (kaiser, czar); the christening of the baby Ves- 

7 


136° THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


pucci as Amerigo has led to America and American. 
So also with a planet: Herschel had the naming of 
Uranus, and Leverrier of Neptune; only they too were 
guided by the already established usages of language 
and the consequent preferences of the community ; the 
name of Georgium sidus, with which, in the former 
case, it was unworthily sought to flatter a monarch, was 
frowned upon, and dropped out of sight. The discov- 
erers of the asteroids enjoy the same privilege; and 
under the same conditions. So with all scientific dis- 
coverers ; they exercise a prerogative, yet under limita- 
tions; they must respect the prejudices of their fellows, 
and they must prove their right as nomenclators: in 
the scientific community, as every one knows, the claims 
of rival name-makers are very sharply discussed, under 
government of nicely-established rules. So with in- 
ventors likewise: to each is conceded a limited right to 
give a name, or to determine the acceptance of a name 
given by some one else, to what he has produced. Nor 
is the case different anywhere in the technical vocabu- 
laries of art, of science, of philosophy. The metaphy- 
sician who draws a new distinction denominates it 5 
he is even allowed—always with restrictions—to recast 
the whole vocabulary of his department, for his own 
special convenience ; and if the other philosophers 
are convinced of the usefulness of the change, they 
ratify it. . f . 

All this is done under the full review of conscious- 
ness. There is first the apprehension of something as 
calling for expression, or for better expression, and then 
the reaching out after, and the obtaining in some way, 
the means of expression. 7 

But just this, only with variety in the degree of 
consciousness involved, is the nature of the process of 


THE IDEA ANTECEDENT TO THE NAME. 137 


name-making in all its varieties. If it were not so, lan- 
guage would consist of two discordant parts, one made 
in this way, and one in some other. Let us consider it 
a little more particularly, with reference to some of the 
principles involved. 

First, there is always and everywhere an antecedency 
of the conception to the expression. In common phrase, 
we first have our idea, and then geta name for it. This 
is so palpably true of all the more reflective processes 
that no one would think of denying it; to do so would 
be to maintain that the planet, or plant, or animal, 
could not be found and recognized as something yet 
unnamed until a title had been selected and made ready 
for clapping upon it; that the child could not be born 
until the christening-bowl was ready. But it is equally 
true, only not so palpable, in all the less conscious acts, 
all the way down the scale to the most instinctive. The 
principle of life, for example, was called animus, ‘ blow- 
ing,’ or spiritus, ‘ breathing,’ because the nomenclators 
had a dim, to us a wholly insufficient, apprehension of 
something within the bodily frame, distinct from it, 
though governing and directing it, something which 
could come to an end while the body continued in ex- 
istence ; and because the breath seemed a peculiar mani- 
festation of this something, its stoppage being the most 
conspicuous sign of the latter’s death: they seized the 
expression for an already formed conception as undeni- 
ably as did the anatomist who, by an equally bold fig- 

ure, first applied ¢nosculation to the observed connec- 
tion of the arteries and veins. Every figurative trans- 
fer which ever made a successful designation for some 
non-sensible act or relation, before undesignated, rested 
upon a previous perception of analogy between the one 
thing and the other: no one said apprehend of an idea 


138 THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


until he had felt the resemblance between the reaching- 
out of the bodily organs after a physical object they 
want to handle and the striving of the mental powers 
toward a like end; we repeat the act when we say “you 
don’t get hold of my meaning.” No one said “a thought 
strikes me,” or “occurs to me” (i. e. ‘runs against me”), 
or “comes into my head” (German, fallt mir edn, ‘falls 
in to me’), except as result of an analogy which his 
mind had discovered between the intellectual and the 
physical action. When a certain new shade of red had 
been produced by the creative ingenuity of modern 
chemistry, the next thing was to give it a name; and 
magenta was pitched upon, by a perfectly conscious pro- 
cess, because historical causes had at about that time 
given a celebrity to the town Magenta: the name was 
not a whit more indispensable to the conception of the 
color than, at a period so much more ancient that we 
cannot get back to it, the name green had been to the 
conception of its color: men said green when they had 
observed the distinction of this from other colors, and 
its especial appurtenance to ‘ growing’ things. And if 
we were to trace the etymology of any other similar — 
word, we should find it of the same character. Nor is | 
the genesis of form-words and forms unlike this. Of 
was changed to a (virtual) sign of the genitive case, 
and to to an infinitive sign, by a long succession of 
steps, each of which was a putting of the word to 
a use slightly different from that which it had served 
before, in order to answer a felt need of expression 5 
and nothing other than this is implied in the making 
of loved, of donnerai, of amabam, of déca, of asme 
(am). 

We might go over the whole list of illustrations 
given in the preceding chapters, and as many more as 


THE IDEA ANTECEDENT TO THE NAME. 139 


we chose to take, without finding a case different from — 
these. The doctrine that a conception is impossible 
without a word to express it is an indefensible paradox 
—indefensible, that is to say, except by misapprehensions 
and false arguments. One or two of these it may be 
worth while to notice more particularly. 

It is wont to be assumed by those who oppose the 
antecedence of the idea to the sign, that this opinion 
implies the elaboration by thinkers of a store of thoughts 
in advance, and then the turning back and naming them 
by a conscious after-thought. Here is an inexcusably 
gross misrepresentation. There is implied, rather, that 
each act of nomenclature is preceded by its own act of 
conception; the naming follows as soon as the call for 
it is felt: even, it may be, before the need is realized ; 
the forward step in mental action may be so small in 
each particular case that only after many have been 
taken in the same direction is the removal noticed, when 
reflection chances to be applied to it. Every conceptual 
act is so immediately followed as to seem accompanied 
by a nomenclatory one. Or, an inkling of an idea is 
won ; it floats obscurely in the mind of the community 
until some one grasps it clearly enough to give itaname; 
and it at once takes shape (perhaps only a delusive 
shape), after his example, in the minds of others. The 
immense gain in clearness of apprehension, in facility of 
handling, conferred upon a conception by its naming, is 
not for a moment to be denied: only those are in error 
who would transform this advantage into an absolute 
necessity. Not less is their error by whom the acknowl- 
edged impossibility that the mind should do without 
language the work which it actually does is transferred 
to each single minute mental action. It might just as 
well be claimed that a man cannot ascend to the summit 


140 THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


of St. Peter’s, or go from Rome to Constantinople, be- 
cause in each case the distance is vastly greater than the 
length of his legs. In point of fact, he takes one step, 
upward or onward, at a time, and makes each newly-won 
position a starting-point for further motion ; and in this 
way he can go just as far as circumstances and his natu- 
ral powers allow. Just so with the mind; every item 
of knowledge and of self-command that it conquers it 
fixes in assured possession by means of language; and it 
is always reaching out for more knowledge, and gaining 
additional control of its powers, and fixing them in the 
same way. It is, as we have repeatedly seen already, 
always at work under the surface of speech, recasting 
and amending the classifications involved in words, ac- 
quiring new control-of conceptions once faintly grasped 
and awkwardly wielded, crowding new knowledge into 
its old terms—all, on the whole, by and with the help 
of language, and yet in each individual item indepen- 
dently of language: and there is nothing in the produc- 
tion of new signs that is different from the rest. The 
mind not only remodels and sharpens its old instru- 
ments, but also makes its new ones as it works on. 
Again, in making provision of expression for new 
conceptions, the names-giving faculty gets its material 
simply where it can most conveniently, not inquiring 
too curiously whence it comes. Virtually, the object 
aimed at is to find a sign which may henceforth be 
linked by association closely to the conception, and used 
to represent it in communication and in the processes 
of mental action. ‘To attempt more than this would be 
useless indeed, when the tie by which each individual 
holds and uses his whole body of expression is only this 
same one of association. As we saw abundantly in the 
second chapter, the child gets his words by learning 


VALUE OF ETYMOLOGICAL REASONS. 141 


them from others’ lips, and connecting them with the’ 
same conceptions that others do. Questions of etymol- 
ogy are naught to him, as even the question what lan- 
guage he shall acquire at all. But those questions are 
not really anything more to the adult; nay, not even to 
the learned etymologist, so far as concerns his practical 
use of speech. ‘The most learned of the guild can only 
follow for a brief distance backward the history of most 
words ; and, near or far, he comes to a reason identical 
with that of the peasant: “It was the usage:” a cer- 
tain community, at a certain time, used such and such a 
sign thus and so; and hence, by this and that succession 
of partly traceable historical changes, our own usage 
has come to be what it is. We have had to notice over 
and over again, above, the readiness on the part of 
language-users to forget origins, to cast aside as cum- 
brous rubbish the etymological suggestiveness of a 
term, and concentrate force upon the new and more 
adventitious tie. This is one of the most fundamental 
and valuable tendencies in name-making; it consti- 


5) 
tutes an essential part of the practical availability of 


language. 

Even when there is no conspicuous transfer, when 
the changes of use are so slight and gradual that each 
new application stands closely connected with its prede- 
cessor, there is no real persistency of original value, and 
the point finally reached is often enough so far off from 
the place of starting that the one cannot be seen from 
the other—as when, in one of our examples above, a 
word (have) of which the ultimate radical idea is ‘ seize, 
grasp,’ has become in one and the same language a sign 
of possession in every kind, physical and moral, and 
likewise of past action, of future obligation, and of 
causation. There is nothing in the least abnormal 


142 THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


about such a case; every language has a plenty like it to 
show. But every language has also cases in abundance 
of a more summary distant transfer, making the reasons 
that underlie the current use of words so trivial or so 
preposterous that, if use were heedful of incongruities, 
the words could not stand a moment. Two forms, for 
example, of the great forces that govern matter, elec- 
tricity and magnetism, are named, the one from a Greek 
word for ‘amber,’ the other from an obscure province of 
Thessaly ; merely because the first electric phenomena 
observed by the founders of our civilization appeared in 
connection with the rubbing of a bit of amber, and be- 
cause the stones that exhibited to them the magnetic 
force came from Magnesia. Galvanism seems more 
worthy, because there is a certain propriety in our hon- 
oring the man who initiated our acquaintance with 
this department of phenomena; yet, after all, it is 
rather petty to link such an element to the name of an 
Italian doctor. Tragic, tragedy, and all their train, 
come, by some tie of connection not yet fully under- 
stood, from the Greek word for a ‘ he-goat;’ comze and 
comedy, probably from that for ‘ village,’ the same with 
our home. Many of the examples already used in other 
connections might well be recalled here, as equally suit- 
ing our present purpose ; but it is surely unnecessary to 
go further; our thesis is already sufficiently proved. If 
a direct and necessary tie had to be established even at 
the outset between idea and sign, new inventions would 
be constantly coming into speech, instead of showing 
themselves, as at present, the rarest of phenomena. 
The reason why we resort instead to the store of old 
material is, like all the rest, simply one of convenience. 
And perhaps, after all, the most telling fact of wide 
range is that the stores of expression of a wholly 


VALUE OF ETYMOLOGICAL REASONS. 143 


strange language are, when once the way is opened, | 
drawn upon without stint; and we English-speakers 
come to call things innumerable by certain names for 
the very unphilosophical reason that certain commu- 
nities in southeastern Europe, a long time ago, called 
things more or less resembling these by names some- 
what similar. 

Our doctrine must not at all be understood as imply- 
ing that there is no reason why anything is called as it 
is: there is in every case a reason; only the present use 
of the name is not dependent on it ; it cannot always be 
found out; and, if found, it is grounded on conven- 
ience, not on necessity of any kind. It amounts to this: 
the conception in question is thus designated because 
that other was formerly so and so designated; and the 
same is true of the latter also ; another earlier designa- 
tion of a more or less kindred conception lay back of it 
—and so on, as far back toward the beginning as our 
limited vision can reach. Our tracing of the etymology 
of a word is the following-up of a series of acts of 
name-making, consisting chiefly in the new applications 
of old material—with the accompanying, but indepen- 
dent, changes of form. And every one of those acts 
was one of choice, involving the free working of the 
human will; only under the government, as always and 
everywhere, of conditions and motives. In order com- 
pletely to understand and judge it, we need to put our- 
selves precisely in the nomenclator’s place, apprehending 
just his acquired resources of expression and his habits 
of thought and speech as founded on them; realizing 
just his insight of the new conception and his impulse 
to express it. But this, of course, is wholly out of our 
power; the @ priort position is one we can never as- 
Sume; we can only deal with the case @ posteriori, 


144 THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


reasoning back toward the mental condition from the act 
in which it is manifested. 

Hence it is evident in what sense alone there can be 
a science of morphology, or of the adaptations and re- 
adaptations of articulate signs to the uses and changes 
of thought. As implying the existence of necessary 
laws of significant development, which are to be traced 
out and made to explain the phenomena underlain by 
them, no such science is possible; as classifying and 
arranging the infinite variety of actual facts, and: point- 
ing out the directions in which the movement takes place 
more than in others, it has a most useful work to do. 
What has been done above, in the fifth chapter, is only 
a beginning ; the subject is one which would reward a 
deep and comprehensive investigation, embracing the 
languages of many or all families. 

Once more, there is nothing in the whole compli- 
cated process of name-making which calls for the ad- 
mission of any other efficient force than the reasonable 
action, the action for a definable purpose, of the speakers 
of language: their purpose being, as abundantly shown 
above, the adaptation of their means of expression to 
their constantly changing needs and shifting preferences. 
This great and most important institution, though car- 
ried forward from step to step of its existence in its 
condition as heretofore existing, by the incessant process 
of teaching and learning, is at the same time in no part 
or particle out of reach of the altering action of those 
who learn and use it. If convenience require that the 
word learned and hitherto only used in a certain sense 
or group of senses, and having a certain form, be applied 
to an additional sense, or change its application from the 
old to a new, and be shaped a little differently, the thing 
is done, and no one can hinder it ; if practical use is for 


THE FORCE AT WORK. 145 


any reason no longer served by a word, it drops out of 
use and is no more; if practical need, again, call for pro- 
vision of new expression, it is in one way or another ob- 
tained, the particular way depending on the conditions 
of the particular case. Nor is there any peculiar faculty 
of the mind, any linguistic instinct, or language-sense, 
or whatever else it may be called, involved in the pro- 
cess; this is simply the exercise in a particular direction 
of that great and composite faculty, than which no other 
is more characteristic of human reason, the faculty of 
adapting means to ends, of apprehending a desirable 
purpose and attaining it. It is different only in its acci- 
dents—namely, the kind of object aimed at and the 
kind of material used—and not in its essential nature, 
from that other process, not less characteristic of human 
reason, the making and using of instruments. No ex- 
ercises of reason, in fact, as we have already once or 
twice remarked, are so closely and instructively parallel 
as these two. 

This point is obviously one of the most fundamental 
and vital importance in the philosophy of language. 
There are those still who hold that words get them- 
selves attributed to things by a kind of mysterious 
natural process, in which men have no part; that there 
are organic forces in speech itself which—by fermenta- 
tion, or digestion, or crystallization, or something of the 
sort—produce new material and alter old. No one, 
however, has ever managed, if indeed any one has ever 
attempted, to show these forces in actual operation, or 
to analyze and set forth their way of working and the 
results it produces in detail, exhibiting their product 
item by item. Take any individual bit of linguistic 
growth, and it is found and acknowledged to be the act 
of a human being, working toward definable ends under 


146 . THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


the government of recognizable motives, even though 
without any reflective consciousness of what he is accom- 
plishing: and it is manifestly absurd to recognize one 
force in action in the items and another in their sum. 
If we refuse to examine the items when forming an 
estimate of the force, and only gaze with admiration at, 
the great whole, there is no theory so false that we may 
not for a time rest in it with satisfaction. But we 
might with the same reason regard the pyramids, in our 
wonder at their immensity and grandeur, as great crys- 
tals, produced by the infinite organizing forces of Na- 
ture, as ascribe language to organic powers contained 
within itself; the moment we come to examine their 
component parts, we find everywhere the marks of 
human workmanship; and we ourselves are all the 
time building similar structures, even if not upon so 
grand a scale as the men of old. The general laws or 
general tendencies of language, well enough called by 
that name if we do not let ourselves be deceived by the 
terms we use, are really only laws of human action, un- 
der the joint guidance of habit and circumstance. As 
for setting them up as efficient causes, that is sheer 
mythology ; we might as well erect into forces the laws 
which govern the development of political institutions, 
or the tendencies which in any country, at a given 
time, are leading to the victory of one party over anoth- 
er: it all resolves itself at last into the action of indi- 
vidual minds, capable of choice, under wide-reaching 
motives and inducements, which are recognizable in 
their general operations, though not in the detail of 
their working upon each mind. 

One great reason why men are led to deny the 
agency of the human will in the changes of speech is 
that they see so clearly that it does not work consciously 


UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PROCESS. 147 


toward that purpose. No one says to himself, or to 
others: “ Our language is defective in this and that par- 
ticular; go to now, and let us change it;” any more 
than he says: “ All things carefully considered, this par- 
ticular word in our speech can well enough be spared ; 
let us cast it out.” The end aimed at—and not even 
that with full consciousness—is the supply of a need 
of expression, or the attainment of a more satis- 
factory expression. An exigency arises, a conjuncture 
in which the existing available resources are not suf- 
ficient for the speaker’s ends; and, in one or other of 
the various ways described above, he adds to them to 
answer his present purpose. Or the opportunity offers 
itself, and is seized, for a short cut, a new and more 
attractive path, to a point accessible enough in old ways. 
A person commits thus an addition to language without 
ever being aware of it; any more than the parents who 
name their son reflect that they are thus virtually mak- 
ing an addition to the city directory. If he will well 
understand it to be in this sense, every one is welcome 
to hold that alterations of speech are not made by the 
human will; there is no will to alter speech; there is 
only will to use speech in a way which is new ; and the 
alteration comes of itself as a result. So it was not by 
the exertion of his will that the reptile, creeping over 
the muddy surface of a Permian or Jurassic shore, made 
a record of himself for the human geologist to study, a 
few million years later; and yet, if he had not volun- 
tarily taken the steps, under sufticient inducement, there 
would have been no record. 

We must not, indeed, commit the error of ascribing 
too much consciousness even to the act of satisfying 
the momentary impulse which produces the alteration. 
Thus, for example, in phonetic change. A word is pro- 


148 THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


duced by a highly intricate succession of acts on the 
part of the vocal organs; a careless and unheeded omis- 
sion of any one of them results in a mutilation of the 
word, or a slight relaxation of the energy of articulation 
affects the character of one of the sounds in the com- 
pound; and as the word answers its purpose just as 
well as before, it passes without notice, and the act is 
repeated, and becomes first customary, then constant. 
This is, in fact, the normal method of phonetic cor- 
ruption; yet no sensible person would ever think of 
recognizing any other agency at work than the speaker 
himself, acting voluntarily—any more than he would 
attribute it to some force operating from outside if a 
man, on coming to a ditch which he had been used to 
leap every day, should some time put forth an insut- 
ficient exertion of force, and should fall in. If there 
were penalties of this sort following slips in utterance, 
the subject of phonetic change would make but a small 
figure in our comparative grammars. And this is not 
the only way in which careless or slovenly handling of 
language leads to change. A very large department of 
alterations has no other source, but is due to the omis- 
sion of distinctions, the blunders of mistaken analogy, on 
the part of those who have not carefully studied and do 
not bear accurately in mind the proper uses of the words 
they employ. And yet, here just as much as in the case 
of the naturalist who cons his Greek and Latin diction- 
aries in search of a name for a new mineral or plant, 
the act of change is the work of the speaker, and of him 
alone. 7 

Another reason for holding the false view which we . 
are now combating is that every person is conscious of 
his inability-to effect a change in language by his own 
authority and arbitrarily ; and what he cannot do, he is 


ACTION OF THE COMMUNITY. 149 


sure that nobody can do. And that is true enough; in 
a sense, it is not the individual, but the community, that 
makes and changes language. We must be careful, — 
however, to see clearly in what sense, lest we fail sig- 
nally to understand the subject we are examining. 
There is implied here a point of high importance in 
linguistic philosophy, one which we have already had 
more or less in view, but have not taken up for direct 
consideration: namely, the part which the community 
of speakers, as distinguished from the individual speak- 
er, have to play in language-making. 

The community’s share in the work is dependent 
on and conditioned by the simple fact that language is 
not an individual possession, but a social. It exists (as 
we shall notice more particularly in the fourteenth chap- . 
ter), not only partly, but primarily, for the purpose of 
communication ; its other uses come after and in the 
train of this. To the great mass of its speakers, it exists 
consciously for communication alone; this is the use 
that exhibits and commends itself to every mind. That 
would have no right to be called a language which only 
one person understood and could use; and there is not, 
nor has ever been, any such in existence. Acceptance 
by some community, though but a limited one, is abso- 
lutely necessary in order to convert any one’s utterances 
into speech. Hence arise the influences which guide 
and restrain individual action on language. In the first 
place, an individual’s alterations and additions, if not 
adopted by others and kept up in their tradition, die 
with him, and never come to light at all. But again, 
even if he were careless of offending the prejudices or 
shocking the taste of his fellows, he would not, at any 
rate, pass the limit of being intelligible to them; and 
this would be by itself a powerful brake to check his 


150 THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


arbitrary action. But such a brake is unnecessary, be- 
cause, in the third place, each individual feels, in the 
main, the governing force of the same motives which 
sway the minds of his fellows. He does not himself 
incline, any more than they would incline to allow him, 
to abandon the established habits of speech and go off 
upon a tangent, toward some new and strange mode of 
expression. Everything in language goes by analogy; 
what a language is in the habit of doing, it can do, but 
nothing else; and habits are of very slow growth ;’a lost 
habit cannot be revived; a new one cannot be formed 
except gradually, and almost or quite unconsciously. 
And the reason of this lies in the common preferences 
of the speakers. We signify the fact popularly by say- 
ing that such and such a thing is opposed to the “ genius 
of the language;” but that is merely a mythological 
term; the German calls the same thing the Sprach- 
gefihl, ‘speech-feeling,’ or ‘linguistic instinct:’ both 
are expressions of a convenient dimness, under which 
inexact thinkers often hide an abundance of indefinite 
or erroneous conceptions. What is really meant is the 
sum, or resultant, of the preferences of the language- 
users, as determined by the already existing material 
and usages of their speech; outside of certain narrow 
limits of variation, they are not themselves tempted to 
suggest, nor will they ratify and accept as suggested by 
any one, new meanings, new phrases, new words. 

Our recognition of the community as final tribunal 
which decides whether anything shall be language or 
not, does not, then, in the least contravene what has 
been claimed above respecting individual agency. Some 
one must lead the way for the rest to follow; if they do 
not follow, he falls back or stands alone. The commu- 
nity cannot act save by the initiative of its single mem- 


VARIOUS ORIGINS OF ONE WORD. 151 


bers; they can accomplish nothing save by its codpera- 
tion. Every new item in speech has its own time and 
occasion and place of origination; it spreads from one 
to another until it wins general currency, or else it is 
stifled by general neglect. Only, of course, it is not 
necessary that every single change should start from a 
single point. There are some toward which the general 
mind so distinctly inclines, which lie so close outside of 
and within reach from the present boundaries of usage, 
that they are made independently by many persons, in 
many places, and thus have a variety of starting-points 
from which to strive after currency. Probably it was 
thus with zs, when, two or three centuries ago, it was 
crowded into English speech, against the outspoken 
opposition of educated and “correct” speakers, by the 
force of its apparent analogy with the general store of 
English possessives; probably the same was the case 
with 2s being done, the corresponding passive form to 
the continuous active 7s doing, as is done corresponds to 
does—a phrase which, against a like opposition, has not 
yet made its place entirely good in the best English 
usage. Phonetic changes are especially likely to be thus 
general, instead of solitarily individual, in their origin. 
A very notable example is seen in the Germanic wm- 
laut, or modification of vowel (see above, p. 7 1); which, 
since it is wanting in the Gothic, cannot have belonged 
to the Germanic branches before their separation, but 
was later developed independently in the High-German, 
the Low-German, and the Scandinavian dialects, doubt- 
less as the final and accordant working-out of habits of 
utterance which were already present in the unitary 
Germanic dialect. 

Having thus recognized the nature of the force 
which, notwithstanding the strictness of linguistic tra- 


152 THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS. 


dition, is all the time altering the traditionary material, 
and seen in what ways and under what inducements it 
acts, we have next to view the same force, in the same 
modes of action, as causing not only the variation of a 
single language from age to age of its existence, but 
also, under the government of external circumstances, 
its variation in space, its divarication into dialects. 


CHAPTER IX. 
LOCAL AND CLASS VARIATION OF LANGUAGE! DIALECTS. 


Dialectic differences within the limits of a single language; individual, 
class, and local peculiarities of speech. What makes a language 
one. Influences favoring or restraining dialectic differences ; effect 
of culture, Illustration: Germanic language-history ; Romanic. 
Centripetal and centrifugal forces; separate growth causes dia- 
lectic division; examples.- Verbal correspondences prove common 
descent of words and languages; cautions as to applying this prin- 
ciple. Degrees of relationship. Constitution of Indo-European 
family and evidences of its unity. Universality of families and 
dialectic relations. Relation of terms “language” and “ dialect.” 


OvR inquiries into the phenomena of speech have 
_ thus far shown us that the mass of each one’s language 
is acquired by him by a process of learning, of direct 
acquisition of what is put before his mind by others; 
that, however, each one is at the same time a partner 
in the work of changing the language: contributing, in- 
deed, only an infinitesimal quota toward it, in exact pro- 
portion to his*importance in the aggregate of speakers 
by whom the language is kept in existence, yet doing 
his part in a sum which is all made up of such infinitesi- 
mal parts, and would not exist without them. The tra- 
dition of speech is carried on by him and such as he is; 
its modification is due to no other agency. Every item 
of difference between new speech and old, whether in 


154 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


the way of alteration or of addition, has its separate ori- 
gin, beginning in the usage of individuals, and spread- 
ing and seeking that wider acceptance which alone 
makes language of it; and it has its time of probation, 
during which it is trying to establish itself. 

But if this is true, then there must be in every exist- 
ing language, at any time, processes of differentiation 
not yet fully carried out, words and forms of words in 
a state of transition, altering but not altered; words and 
phrases under trial, introduced but not general; words 
obsolescent but not yet obsolete; old modes of pronun- 
ciation beginning to seem strange and affected, new 
modes coming into vogue—and so on, through the 
whole catalogue of possible linguistic changes. 

And this is, in fact, precisely the state of things, in 
every language under the sun: a state of things only 
explainable by the causes which we have been consider- 
ing. It exists even in our own speech; although here, 
for reasons to be presently adverted to, the conditions 
are more opposed to it than almost anywhere else in the 
world. We must be careful not to overrate the uni- 
formity of existing languages; it is far enough from 
being absolute. In a true and defensible sense, every 
individual speaks a language different from every other. 
_ The capacities and the opportunities of each have been 

such that he has acquired command of a part of English 
speech not precisely identical with any one else’s: the 
peculiarity may be slight, but it is certainly there. 
Then, what is yet more obvious and yet more impor- 
tant, the form of each one’s conceptions, represented by 
his use of words, is different from any other person’s; 
all his individuality of character, of knowledge, educa- 
tion, feeling, enters into this difference. And yet 
again, few if any escape the taint of local and personal 


INDIVIDUAL AND CLASS VARIATIONS. 155 


peculiarities of pronunciation and phraseology, peculiari- 
ties which, because more conspicuous than the others, 
are more often noticed by us and called dialectic. This 
last shades off into the more wide-spread and deeper 
differences of district and class; every separate part of 
a great country of one speech has its local form, more 
or less strongly marked—even where, as in America, 
there are no old inherited dialects, of long standing, 
such as prevail in Britain, in Germany, in France: in 
short, almost everywhere. Every class, however con- 
stituted, has its dialectic differences: so, especially, the 
classes determined by occupation; each trade, calling, 
profession, department of study, has its technical vocabu- 
Jary, its words and phrases unintelligible to outsiders ; 
the carpenter, the iron-maker, the machinist, the miner, 
not less than the physician, the geologist, or the meta- 
physician, has occasion every day to say many things 
which would not be understood by a man of any of the 
other classes mentioned, if not exceptionally well-in- 
formed. Then there are the differences in grade of 
education; the highly cultivated have a diction which 
is not in all its parts at the command of the vulgar; 
they have hosts of names for objects and ideas of edu- 
cated knowledge, which (like dahlia, petroleum, tele- 
graph, instanced above) may perhaps some time work 
their way down into the lower rank, becoming uni- 
versal, like 7s and head, and long and short, instead of 
class-words only; and, yet more especially, the uncul- 
tivated have current in their dialect a host of inaccu- 
racies, offenses against the correctness of .speech—as 
ungrammatical forms, mispronunciations, blunders of 
application, slang words, vulgarities; all of these, per- 
haps, analogous with alterations which the cultivated 
speech, as compared with its predecessors, has under- 


156 ‘DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


gone, and some of them destined to become at a future 
time the established usage of the whole language; but 
as yet kept down in the category of errors by the re- 
sistance of the higher classes to their acceptance and 
use. J inally, there are the differences of age: the nur- 
sery, in particular, has its dialect, offensive to the ears of 
old bachelors; and older children have their language 
at least characterized by limited vocabulary. 

Every one of all these differences is essentially dia- 
lectic: that is to say, they differ not at all in kind, but 
only in degree, from those which hold apart acknowl- 
edged dialects. They all fall, as regards their origin, 
under the classes of change already laid down: they are 
deviations from a former standard of speech which have 
hitherto acquired only a partial currency, within the 
limits of a class or district; or they are retentions of a 
former standard, which the generality of good speakers 
have now abandoned. In illustration of this latter 
class, we may note in passing that no small number of 
what the English stigmatize as Americanisms are cases 
of survival from former good usage, and that, on the 
other hand, much of what we regard as the peculiarities 
of Irish pronunciation is also old English, more faith- 
fully preserved by the Irish than by the more native 
speakers. Of course, it is as wrong to be lagging in the 
rear of the great moving body of the usages of a lan- 
guage as to be rushing on in advance, or flying off to 
one side. When the speech of the best speakers 
changes, those who do not conform have to be ranked 
in a lower class. 

And yet, despite all these varieties, the language is 
one; and one for the simple reason that, though the 
various individuals who speak it may talk so as to be 
unintelligible to one another, they may also, on matters 


VARIATION WITHIN A LANGUAGE. 157 


ot the most familiar common interest, understand one © 
another. As the direct object of language is communi- 
cation, the possibility of communication makes the unity 
of a language. No one can define, in the proper sense 
of that term, a language ; for it is a great concrete insti- 
tution, a body of usages prevailing in a certain commu- 
nity, and it can only be shown and described. You 
have it in its dictionary, you have it in its grammar; as 
also, in the material and usages which never get into 
either dictionary or grammar; and you can trace the 
geographical limits within which it is used, in all its 
varieties. 

It is an obvious corollary from the view we have 
taken of the forces governing the growth of language, 
and of the way in which they act, that the guwasz-dialectic 
discordances existing within the limits of the same lan- 
guage in the same community will be greatest where 
the separation of classes and sections is greatest. The 
necessity of communication is the restraint upon the 
alterative processes, and communication is the means 
whereby any alteration actually made is adopted by 
all: whatever, then, makes communication most lively 
and penetrating, through all regions and all ranks, will 
tend to preserve the unity of speech most strictly 
through the whole community. On the other hand, 
all that dulls the forces of communication, and lets a 
people break up into tribes, or into widely-sundered 
castes or classes, tends to increase the discordance of the 
forms comprehended together in the general language. 

Different causes exert in this way a different influ- 
ence.» On the one hand, in a barbarous condition of 
society the discordances of class and occupation are at 
their lowest. All members of the same community 
stand substantially upon the same level; with but in- 


158 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


significant exceptions, they have the same knowledge, 
the same skill, the same habits; the collective wealth of 
thought and its expression is not too great for each per- 
son to grasp and wield the whole of it. On the other 
hand, local differences are at their highest point, since 
it is only civilization and culture that can bind together 
into one the parts of a great community. The influ- 
ences of barbarism, beyond narrow limits, are prevail- 
ingly segregative; a wild race that multiplies and 
spreads widely breaks up into mutually jealous and hos- 
tile divisions, within each of which linguistic changes 
run their own independent course. Every element of 
culture that finds its way in exercises a conservative in- 
fluence, tending both to preserve the language from 
change and to preserve its unity throughout the terri- 
tory it occupies. The rise of a national feeling of so 
high an order that it reverences the deeds and the words 
of past generations, and leads to the production of a 
national literature, is obviously conservative, because it 
amounts to setting up a norm of correct speech, by 
which men’s minds shall be influenced in judging, for 
acceptance or rejection, the individual proposals of 
change. A written literature, the habit of recording 
and reading, the prevalence of actual instruction, work 
yet more powerfully in the same direction ; and when 
such forces have reached the degree of strength which 
they show in our modern enlightened communities, 
they fairly dominate the history of speech. The lan- 
guage is stabilized, especially as regards all those altera- 
tions which proceed from inaccuracy ; local differences 
are not only restrained from arising, but are even wiped 
out, so far as the effect of education extends. There is 
also a state of things intermediate between the two ex- 
tremes of barbarism and all-pervading culture: namely, 


LEARNED AND POPULAR LANGUAGE. 159 


where there is culture which reaches only a particular 
class, a minority, of the community, its conserving influ- 
ences being mainly limited to that class. This alone 
possesses the records of the language, and, using them 
as models, propagates its speech nearly unaltered, while 
the language of the mass goes on changing unchecked. 
There comes thus to be a separation of the originally 
unitary speech into two parts: a learned dialect, which 
is the old common language preserved, and a popular 
dialect, which is its altered descendant; and the latter, 
perhaps, finally crowds the former out of existence, and 
becomes, in its turn, the cultivated speech of a new 
order of things. Such has been, for example, the his- 
tory of the Latin, and of the later dialects descended 
from it, and now become the vehicles of great and noble 
literatures ; such, also, that of the now cultivated lan- 
guages of modern Aryan India, in their relations to the 
Sanskrit. 7 

Let us suppose, then, that there is a definite com- 
munity X, of one speech. It is divided—not, of course, 
by definite or fixed lines—into the various local parts 
-A; B, C, ete., and into the classes, whether social, voca- 
tional, or educational, A, B, C, etc., and a, 3, é, etc. ; 
the various divisions variously overlapping and overly- 
ing one another. - The common speech is, like all living 
speech, in a condition of constant growth and change ; 
this change being possible, and actually occurring, only 
by such acts of alteration as we have considered in de 
tail above, each arising at a point or points in one or 
more divisions, and spreading thence by communication 
to the rest. What arises thus in A, or B, or C, becomes 
at length the possession of all—if, indeed, it does not 
continue within certain limits, as a merely local dialectic 


word or mode of expression. So what arises in A or a 
8 


160 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


goes through the rest—unless it remain within the boun- 
daries of a class, as a technical term, a high-caste ex- 
pression, a popular blunder or vulgarism, or something 
of the sort. And the amount and value of these vari- 
ous residua, constituting the minor discordances which 
may consist with general agreement and unity, is vari- 
ous according to such determining circumstances as we 
reviewed briefly in the paragraph next preceding: no 
language is or can be without them, but shea! are very 
different in different languages. 

This whole state of things is dependent: on his- 
torical conditions, as concerns its continuance and 
changes. Let us take our hypothetical case to represent 
the German language as it was at and after the be- 
ginning of our era. Here, while the divisions of class 
and occupation were comparatively unimportant, those 
of locality, A, B, OC, ete., were very marked: so much 
so, indeed, as to make it improper to speak of the 
whole as one language ; besides innumerable minor dis- 
cordances, there were sections the speech of each of 
which was not intelligible to the rest; and if no new 
force had been introduced, things. might have gone on. 
thus to the end of time, the local discordances constant- 
ly deepening and widening. But a new and controlling 
force was introduced: that of Greco-Roman, soon to 
become European, civilization: this led the way to in- 
stitutional and political unity. But not for a long time 
did it win the predominance in the domain of language. 
At first, each local division had its own separate bla ; 
the bobinnings of literature were produced, and are in 
part still extant, in one and another local fama of speech, 
fully ititelligihlé only within limits. But at length, 
early in the sixteenth century, the fullness of time was 
come; political and educational conditions had reached 


GERMAN LANGUAGE. 161 


a point where a movement toward an educated—and so, 
in a certain sense, an artificial—unity of speech could 
be made with success. A certain local form of speech, 
A—which, to be sure, had already gained a degree of 
currency as a class-form also—was definitely adopted by 
the educated as their dialect, A, the style of German 
which should thenceforth alone be written, and looked 
up to as a model, and taught in the schools. And its 
authority has ever since gone on increasing, with the 
extension of the power of civilization and education, till 
now an outsider almost looks upon it as the sole German 
speech. That, however, it isfar enough from being ; it 
is still only A, the German of a class, though of a class 
which the conditions of modern civilization have made 
the dominant and the growing one. B, C, and D, etc., 
still subsist ; there are whole regions of Germany where 
the local dialect is unintelligible to him who is versed 
only in the literary language ; but they divide among 
them, for the most part, only the classes of lower educa- 
tion, “’and J; ete.; and they, as well as the classes of 
vocation, @ and b and ¢, etc., feel profoundly and in 
various ways the influence of the learned speech. A 
is the predominant speech, modifying and shaping every- 
thing else in German usage, and even promising, if the 
forces of education should ever attain that overwhelm- 
ing degree of importance, to sweep out of existence all 
the other varieties, save those of occupation. 

Not, however, as we must next notice, over the 
whole territory occupied by High or Low German 
tribes. There were at least two local varieties—we may 
call them E and F—which did not fall under the unify- 
ing influences that brought all the rest within the do- 
minion of A. One, E, the English, was cut off by dis- 
tance and inaccessibility, and consequent independence. 


162 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


The Germanic Angles and Saxons, who carried a Ger-. 
man dialect across the North Sea into Britain, and with 
it displaced the old Celtic speech, have passed, in their 
separateness, through a series of changes analogous with 
those of their former fellow-countrymen. Their own 
secondary divisions, of whatever kind—whether local, as 
E’, E”, E’”, ete., or of class, as 4’, ”’, etc.—have been 
in a similar manner brought under the controlling influ- 
ence of another literary dialect, of like origin with that 
of Germany. And in the northeastern district of con- 
tinental Germany, the Netherlands, political indepen- 
dence, with the consequent isolation of general interests, 
had a kindred result; while the rest of Low Germany, 
speaking by local division forms of German speech not 
less peculiar than those of the Anglo-Saxons and Dutch, 
uses the High-German literary dialect as its learned 
speech, the corner Holland and the colony England have 
given an equivalent literary value to their separate Low- 
German dialects. No matter how the local varieties 
A and B and C become separated, so that what passes 
in each is not participated in by the others, their de- 
velopment will take a different course, and they will in 
time become separate tongues. 

The same forces, in like modes of action, but with 
abundant differences of detail, are seen at work in pro- 
ducing the modern Romanic languages, descendants of 
the Latin. When the arms and civilization and polity 
of Rome carried her speech all through Italy, and over 
great regions outside of Italy, it was already divided by 
education into class-varieties. All were transmitted to- 
gether; and the learned dialect—A, as we may call it, 
in accordance with our use of this sign above—has been 
kept up in its complete purity even to the present day, 
by appropriate and adequate means, though in a con- 


. 
— _— 


ROMANIC LANGUAGE, 163 


stantly diminishing class. The lower forms of speech, 
B, C, ete., had their full influence in laying the founda- 
tions of the new history. The changes of Latin went 
on, all the more rapidly for its having passed into the 
keeping of races who had learned it at second hand, by 
an outside pressure; and, as the forces of communica- 
tion were very far from being sufficient to keep the 
immensely extended community one, it broke up, by 
differentiation within geographical limits, into a corre- 
spondingly numerous array of local forms, for which it 
would take several alphabets to provide sufficient sym- 
bols ; and historical circumstances, which in their main 
character and influence admit of being distinctly pointed 
out, led to one here and another there—as ©, and F, 
and I, and P, and S, and W—being adopted as the 
learned dialects of great regions, and used for literary 
and educational purposes, not only by their own native 
speakers, but also by those of the rest—which, like the 
German dialects, still subsist as the uneducated patois 
each of its own district. 

It would be very easy to push this illust#ation in- 
definitely, but to carry it further is quite needless. The 
methods of linguistic change detailed above, and gov- 
erned in their historical workings by the antithesis be- 
tween the initiatory action of the individual, and the 
regulating action of the community in accepting or re- 
jecting his proposals—this has been all we have needed 
to explain the historical phenomena instanced ; and this, 
and this only, is sufficient to explain all the rest. It 
may be fairly and confidently claimed that there is no 
known case which cannot thus be solved. Individuals 
are the diversifying or centrifugal force in the growth 
of speech; for, as there are no two persons absolutely 
alike in countenance, so there are no two identical in 


164 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


character and education, and the shaping influence ex- 
erted by each on the speech he has learned will be 
slightly different from that of every one else. But just 
so far as communication extends, like the centripetal 
force, which dominates the other, and keeps the moving 
body upon a certain track never too far remote from the 
centre, the individualities are curbed and restrained, and 
their jarring action forced into and held in accordance. 
Or, in terms of our recent hypothesis, just so long as 
every change which arises in the local parts A and B 
and ©, and so on, works its way through all the rest, 
passing the ordeal of their acceptance or rejection, so 
long will the language X remain one. It may and will 
alter from age to age; it may even become so changed 
in two or three centuries (as English has actually become 
in a thousand years) that its speakers at one and the 
other end of that period would not, if they could be 
brought together, understand one another at all; yet, 
at every period, all the community would understand 
each other, because it would have changed alike in the 
minds and mouths of all. But separate, in any way you 
please, the parts A and B and C from one another, so 
that the changes in each are made in that alone, and do 
not extend into the rest, and the peculiarities of each 
will begin to be confined to itself ; what we call dialectic 
growth will set in; the process of divarication into 
diverse languages will have begun. A brick wall, high 
enough and long enough, between the sections, would 
perfectly accomplish their division, and initiate dialectic 
divergence ; only, of course, if the separation takes place 
by local removal, so that the sections are brought into 
different external circumstances of nature and occupa- 
tion, and under different historical influences, the pro- 
cess of linguistic divergence will be quickened. 


INCREASING DIVARICATION. 165 


This cutting off, by cessation of communication, of 
a common regulative influence over the never-ending 
changes of speech, may seem a very slight cause of di- 
vergence ; and so in truth it is; but it is fully sufficient 
to account for all the phenomena of dialectic growth. 
No matter how small the angle may be between two 
lines starting from the same point ; if they are protract- 
ed far enough, their extremities may be found any given 
distance apart. And the angle of dialectic divergence 
is practically an increasing one ; the two lines of devel- 
opment curve asunder. At the outset, namely, the 
sum of guiding analogies in each is almost precisely the 
same ; identity of material, and of habits of its use, is, 
as it were, a continuance of the common momentum, car- 
rying the two on in almost the same direction ; and inde- 
pendent accordant results of this community of original 
habit may, as we have more than once seen above, con- 
tinue to appear for a long time, even indefinitely. But 
each bit of difference that creeps in lessens the accord- 
ance ; new habits arise, special disturbing influences set 
in, and the distance comes at last, perhaps, to be rapidly 
instead of slowly increased. The history of our English, 
as compared with the Low-German dialects from which 
it sheered off in the fifth and sixth centuries, is as strik- 
ing an example of this as could be desired. 

Again, as dialectic discordance only arises in conse- 
quence of linguistic growth, and as the maintenance of 
an original condition of speech unchanged would do 
away with all possibility of difference of speech among 
the separated parts of the community which formerly 
spoke it as one together, it. is evident that the rate of 
divergence must depend in great degree upon the gen- 
eral rate of growth. And, as we have seen, the influ- 
ences of barbarism and of civilization are directly op- 


165 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


posed to one another in this regard, although they are 
by no means the only determining influences which 
quicken or retard the alterative processes. It is the 
predominant forces of civilization which, by a two-fold 
action, have kept the language of the two great divisions 
of English-speakers nearly accordant, notwithstanding 
the broad ocean that rolls between them : first, by mak- 
ing actual communication between them easier and 
closer than between two tribes of rude people separated 
only by a few miles of mountain or of plain, by a forest 
or a river; indeed, even by giving them, as it were, in 
their common literature, a great body of speakers who 
are all the time communicating with both; and, in the 
second place, by so restraining the activity of the alter- 
ative processes that their results have time to reach and 
permeate both divisions. Absence of the same conservy- 
ing influences causes the French of the habitans of Can- 
ada and the German of the colony in Pennsylvania to 
differ far-more widely from the dialects of the countries 
whence these colonists came. 

The most instructive attainable example of dialectic 
growth, on the whole, is that presented us in the Ro- 
manic languages, because we have there a most im- 
portant and widely-spread body of highly cultivated 
languages, each with its legion of subsidiary dialectic 
forms ; and also—what is nowhere else to be had in any- 
thing like the same measure—the very mother, the 
Latin, from which they have all sprung. The student 
of language finds in them a whole world of facts to study 
and compare, to trace out in their origin and in the laws 
which have produced them. And his task, though in 
part simple and easy, is also in no small part difficult 
and batiling ; for even here, under the eyes of history, 
as it were, though hidden from them, have gone on 


EXAMPLES OF ROMANIC VARIATION, 167 


changes which seem to defy investigation, producing 
results which cannot be carried back to their sources. 
Let us look at a specimen or two of the process of di- 
varication, as it has passed upon some of the materials 
of the Latin original. | 

The Latin had a word for ‘brother, frater. In 
French, the word,in the abbreviated form frére, still 
bears the old office. But in Italian and Spanish, the 
same word, having undergone still greater mutilation— 
as Spanish fray, Italian frate and fra—signifies only a 
‘brother’ of some ecclesiastical order, a friar, as we call 
it, by yet another form of the same name. So, for 
‘brother’ in its original and proper sense, each language 
has had to provide a new word: the Italian takes the 
diminutive fratello ; the Spanish puts to use the Latin 
germanus, ‘ nearly related,’ and says hermano. Again, 
the Latin had the name mudier for a ‘woman, dis- 
tinctively as woman, besides femina for ‘female,’ 
woman or other. In Spanish, now, the former is still 
retained, altered to muger, in nearly its ancient mean- 
ing; but in Italian, as moglie, it signifies only ‘ wife’ or 
‘spouse ;’ and in French it has utterly disappeared. In 
French, femme, the representative of the other Latin 
word, has become the general name for ‘woman,’ adding 
also the meaning of ‘wife;’ while for ‘female’ has 
come to be used femelle (like Italian fratello for Latin 
frater). For ‘woman,’ the Italian has shaped a new 
word, donna, out of later Latin domina, ‘ mistress ;’ 
and the Spanish uses for ‘lady’ the same word donna, 
besides sevora, a feminine of modern make to senior, 
‘older person.’ These are fair specimens of how the 
original material of a language gets worked over, in 
_ form and in meaning, in the keeping of the severed de- 
scendants of that language. If we looked into the class 


168 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


of verbs, we should find the same condition of things. 
The verb ‘ be,’ for example, is made up of a remnant 
of the forms of the Latin esse, pieced out in all the 
dialects with parts of stare, ‘stand:’ so the French 
états, été, are stabam, status, with remarkable alterations 
of form, one of which has been commented on above 
(p. 54). And French aller, ‘go, is put together by 
adding parts of Latin ire, ‘go, and parts of vadere, 
‘walk,’ toa main stock of very obscure origin, repre- 
senting Latin adnare, ‘arrive by water,’ or aditare, 
‘make one’s adit, or arrival,’ or something of the sort. 

Turning now to the Germanic dialects, our own near- 
est relatives, we find the same kind of resemblance in 
difference everywhere prevailing. The Germanie words 
for ‘ brother’—as Netherlandish bvoeder, German bruder, 
Icelandic brodhir, Swedish and Danish broder and bror 
—are not less obviously the variations of one original 
than are the Romanic products of frater. The old 
Germanic wezb, ‘woman,’ is found. in most of the 
modern languages, in easily recognizable forms, with 
its former value ; but in modern English its representa- 
tive wife has become restricted (like Italian moglie) to 
a married woman. And there is another ancient word, 
Gothic guens and guinon, which in some dialects is the 
accepted name for ‘ woman,’ instead of the other, but 
which in English has undergone the curious fate of be- 
ing divided into two terms, of lofty and humble mean- 
ing, gueen and guean. Our verbs be and go, too, like 
their Romanic equivalents, are made up of fragments 
from various roots, pieced together partly in more 
ancient, partly in more modern times. Both we have 
already noticed elsewhere in passing (pp. 90, 101); it is 
unnecessary here to enter into any further detail re- 
specting them. 


EXAMPLES OF GERMANIC VARIATION, 169 


From these and all the other innumerable corre- 
spondences of the Germanic dialects we cannot possibly 
help drawing the same conclusion which is taught us 
by a comparison of the Latin with its descendants. It 
is not one whit less certain that wife and weib and vif 
and the rest are the variously altered representatives of 
a single primitive Germianic vocable, than that moglie 
and muger come from the Latin mulier. We may not 
always, or often, be able to restore by inference the Ger- 
manic word with a certainty equal to that inspired by 
the actually preserved Latin word; but that makes no 
difference. We believe in the former existence of the 
grandfather of a group of cousins, whom we have never 
seen because he died long ago, just as thoroughly as in 
the present existence of one whom we find still living 
in the midst of another group.’ According to our ex- 
perience of how things go on in the world of human 
beings and in that of words, there is no other possibil- 
ity. The processes of linguistic change, working regu- 
Jarly on in the way in which we see them working in 
the present and the recently past historic periods, are 
fully sufficient to account for the existence in certain 
languages of groups of words more or less resembling 
one another yet not identical ; and there is no need that 
we resort to adventurous hypotheses for its explanation. 

This, legitimately generalized, gives us the great 
principle that genuine correspondences, of whatever 
degree, between the words of different languages, are 
to be interpreted as the result of derivation from one 
original : relationship, in words as in men, implies de- 
scent from a common ancestor. And what is true of 
the words of two languages is true of the languages 
themselves: languages made up of related es must 
be descended from a single common language. 


170 | DIALECTIC VARIATION, 


Only, to this principle need to be applied certain 
cautions and corrections. Two sources of error require 
to be guarded against in its use. First, words are bor- 
rowed out of one language into another, as was fully 
explained and illustrated in the seventh chapter. Cer- 
tain elements in English are of common descent with 
elements in the Romanic and in many other of the 
world’s languages; they have been handed over from 
the tradition of one people into that of another: and 
though there is so far a community of tradition, it does 
not imply general relationship.of the languages. Sec- 
ondly, accidental correspondences occur. between words 
which have no historical connection: so, for example, 
between Greek 6dos and our whole, between Sanskrit 
loka and Latin locus, between Mod. Greek atu, ‘ eye,’ 
and Polynesian mata, ‘see, and soon. ‘These two dif- 
ficulties impose upon the comparer of languages the 
necessity of increased caution in his work, and warn 
him against over-hasty conclusions. An instance or two, 
or a few instances, of verbal correspondence are not 
sufficient to- prove anything. But accidental resem- 
blances have their limit; and it is in general possible to 
distinguish borrowed material, so as not to be misled by 
it into false inferences. The linguist looks to see both 
how many and how close the asserted correspondences 
are, and in-what part of the vocabulary they are found. 
If we did not know by external information the history 
of English, we could still recognize it beyond all question 
as essentially a Germanic dialect, by noticing what parts 
of its material accord with the Germanic tongues, and 
what part with the Romanie. | 

But relationship in language, as in genealogy, is a 
thing of degrees, and for the same reason. The French, 
Spanish, and Italian are cousins, on grounds which we 


INDO-EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENCES. 171 


have already sufficiently noticed; but each is a group 
of yet more closely related dialects. And so also among 
the Germanic languages: the English belongs to a Low- 
German group, still occupying the northern shores of 
Germany, whence the ancestors of the English came ; 
there is likewise a High-German group, occupying the 
central and southern part of Germany; and there is a 
Scandinavian group, holding in possession Denmark, 
Sweden and Norway, and Iceland; moreover, there is 
a single dialect, the Moeso-Gothic, of which limited rec- 
ords are saved from extinction, and which represents 
alone yet another group, of unknown extent. From 
these minor groupings precisely the same inference is 
to be drawn as from the larger ones: they represent 
historical centres of more recent divergence, of the 
same kind and by the same means as the others. 

Nor does the finding of correspondences and tracing 
of relationships end here. Between the Germanic dyo- 
thar and the Latin frater there is a pretty evident re- 
semblance, which becomes still more evident when we 
put alongside of them other words of the same class, as 
German mothar, fathar, and Latin mater, pater. But 
there are yet other groups of languages which show 
similar signs of relationship: we find in Greek ¢parijp 
(meaning, to be sure, only a member of a confraternity, 
like fray and fra, as noticed above) and pajrnp and 
matnp ; and, in Sanskrit, bhrdtar and mdtar and pitar ; 
and the Persian and Celtic and Slavonic tongues have 
in the same words correspondences which are like these, 
though not quite so striking. These are telling indica- 
tions of an original relationship among all the groups 
of languages mentioned: outcroppings, as it were, of 
a vein which invites further exploration. For, in the 
first place, the correspondences are too numerous and 


™~ 


172 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


wide-spread and close to be explained with the slightest 
show of plausibility as the result of chance; and then, 
there appears to be equally small hope of accounting 
for them by borrowing. How should all these widely- 
sundered tribes of men, found at the dawn of history 
in every variety of cultural condition, have obtained 
from a common source, or by transmission from one 
to another, names for conceptions like these, the forma- 
tion of which must have accompanied the first devel- 
opment of family life? Plainly, all probabilities are 
against it. 

No confident conclusion, however, as to so impor- 
tant a fact should be built on narrow foundations ; and 
we look further, into other classes of words. ‘There are 
no savages in the world so undeveloped that they can- 
not count ‘one, two, three’—even though there are 
those who have gone no further than that by their own 
powers, but are either destitute of the higher num- 
bers, or have borrowed them from races more advanced. 
If we find these numerals accordant in the languages 
we have named, it will be a very strong piece of evi- 
dence corroborative of that furnished by the names of 
relationship. And ,the accordance exists, and is of the 
most striking character, not only in these numerals, but 
in all that follow: dwa is the common basis of the 
various words for ‘two, and ¢vz of those for ‘ three,’ 
through the whole great mass of dialects. The pro- 
“nouns, again, are a class of words in which the suspicion 

of borrowing is, if possible, even less to be entertained 5 
and here also, in such words as those for ‘ thou’ (éwa) 
and ‘me’ (ma), in the demonstrative ¢a and the inter- 
rogative kwa, we find a degree of agreement which is 
quite beyond the power of accident to have produced. 

Yet once more, we have seen (p. 119) that inflectional 


INDO-EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENCES. 1735 


apparatus, grammatical structure, is most of all out of 
the reach of a language that is borrowing from another. 
But through all the grammatical apparatus of these 
groups of dialects, when we can reach far enough back 
in their history to find it preserved in a distinct form, 
we discover an accordance not less convincing. Thus, 
in the verbal inflection, there are the various alterations 
of an original ending mz for the first person singular, 
and of masz for the first plural; of s¢ and ¢ast for the 
second person, and of #% and anti for the third; of a 
reduplication forming a perfect tense, of a sign of the 
optative mood, and so on. In noun declension the 
traces are more obscure and scanty, but still perceptible 
enough. The comparison of adjectives is everywhere 
by the same means. Participles and other derivative 
words show the same suffixes of derivation. 

_ In short, there is a superabundance of evidence go- 
ing to prove that the speech of all the peoples we have 
mentioned, filling most of Europe, ancient and modern, 
and an important tract’of Asia, is related, in the sense 
in which we have used that word above. There is no 
theoretic reason against such a fact; rather, every con- 
clusion drawn from the phenomena of existing speech 
makes directly in its favor. We know that the separa- 
tion and isolation of the different parts of a once uni- 
tary community must necessarily bring about a separa- 
tion of its language into different dialects; and we 
know that this process may go on repeating itself, over 
and over again; and that, at the end, those dialects 
which parted latest will (apart from special altering 
forces), though unlike, be least unlike and most like one 
another, while those which parted earliest will be least 
like and most unlike one another: and we know of no 
other way in which this likeness in unlikeness can be 


174 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


brought about. We infer, then, that all the languages 
in question are the divaricated representatives of a sin- 
gle tongue, spoken somewhere and somewhen in the 
past by a single limited community, by the spread and 
dispersion of which all its discordances have in the 
course of time grown up. Such a grand congeries of 
related languages, in different degrees, we are accus- 
tomed to call a “family:” a name taken, by an allow- 
able figurative transfer, from the vocabulary of gene- 
alogy. 

This is an example of the way we are to proceed to 
examine and classify all the various languages which 
the earth contains. The first steps in it are easy enough. 
It takes no conjurer to discover that London English and 
Yorkshire English and Scotch English and negro Eng- 
lish, even, are all one language; and no observant per- 
son, probably, who learns German or Dutch or Swedish, 
fails to see that he has in hand a tongue akin with his 
own. But it takes a more penetrating and enlightened 
study to pick out the signs of original unity amid the 
greatly more conspicuous differences of English, French, 
Welsh, Russian, Romaic, Persian, and Hindi; and it 
requires especially a resort, in the case of each Jan- 
guage, to the older tongues of its own nearer kindred, 
which have preserved the ancient common material 
with less change. Only the learned and experienced 
investigator, therefore, can be trusted to push the work 
of classification safely to its extreme limits; and the 
classification of all human tongues is only attainable by 
the labors of a great number of investigators, each 
learned in his own special department. Nor has it 
been even thus by any means finished; yet much has 
been done toward it: the vast majority of languages 
have been grouped together by their affinities into fam- 


UNIVERSALITY OF DIALECTS. L'75 


ilies and branches of families; and the results of this 
classification have to be briefly reviewed by us in the 
following chapters. 

For, as might be expected to follow from the prin- 
ciples laid down above as determining dialectic growth, 
there is not a language in the world which does not ex- 
ist in the condition of dialectic division, so that the 
speech of each community is the member of a more or 
less extended family—unless, indeed, there may be here 
and there an isolated language so nearly extinct as to 
be used only by the narrowest possible community: by 
a few families, or a single village. Even languages of 
so limited area as the Basque in the Pyrenees, as some 
of the tongues in the Caucasus, have their well-marked 
dialectic forms; because an’ uncivilized people can 
hardly break up even into camps, and still maintain 
that communication which alone can keep their speech 
a unit. 

This linguistic condition of the earth runs parallel, 
in the closest manner, with its social and political con- 
dition. At the very beginning of history, and even as 
far beyond as archeological science can penetrate, the 
earth is all peopled, more or less thickly, with a: seem- 
ingly heterogeneous mass of clans and tribes and na- 
tions. But not even the most heterodox naturalist who 
holds to a variety of origins for the human race believes 
these all to have sprung out of the ground, as it were, 
where they stand: they come from the multiplication 
and dispersion of a certain limited number of primitive 
families, if not, as many think, from that of a single 
family. So with language: at the first attainable pe- 
riod of our knowledge of it, whether by actual record 
or by the inferences of the comparative student, it is in 
a state of almost endless subdivision; and yet every 


176 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


sound linguist holds, and knows that he has the most 
satisfactory reasons for holding, that this apparent con- 
fusion is a result of the extension and divarication of a 
certain limited number of primitive dialects—whether 
of a single one, is a question which we shall have later 
to consider our right to determine. At the earliest 
historical period, too, the darkness of barbarism covers 
the earth in general; the centres of culture are but two 
or three, and their light spreads but a very little way, 
and is even in constant danger of being extinguished 
by the greatly superior brute force of the uncultivated 
masses around. Hence the divaricating forces in lin- 
guistic growth are also in the ascendant’; dialects go on 
multiplying, by the action of the same causes that had 
already produced them. But wherever civilization is at 
work, an opposite influence, in linguistic as in political 
affairs, is powerfully operating. Out of the congeries of 
jarring tribes are growing great nations ; out of the Babel 
of discordant dialects are growing languages of wider and 
constantly extending unity. ‘The two kinds of change 
go hand in hand, simply because the one of them is de- 
pendent on the other: nothing can make wide unity of 
speech except extended community; nothing but civili- 
zation can make extended community. As, through the 
ages of recorded history, the power as well as the degree 
of civilization has been constantly growing, till now it is 
the predominant force, and the uncivilized races subsist 
only by the toleration of the civilized—if even that; so, 
by external forces, every act and influence of which is 
clearly definable, the cultivated languages have -been 
and are extending their sway, crowding out of existence 
the patois which had grown up under the old order of 
things, gaining such advantage that men are beginning 
to dream of a time when one language may be spoken 


LANGUAGE AND DIALECT. 177 


all over the earth. And, though the dream may be 
Utopian, there is not an element of the theoretically 
impossible in it; only a certain condition of external 
circumstances is needed to render it inevitable. 

It is possible so to misunderstand these facts in the 
wide history of human speech as to believe that lan- 
guage actually began in a condition of infinite dialectic 
division, and has been from the outset tending toward 
concentration and final unity. But that is possible only 
by a total failure to comprehend the forces that are at 
work in the growth of language, and the modes of 
their interaction. Tell the ethnologist that the begin- 
nings of the human race were an indefinite number of 
unconnected individuals, who first coalesced into fami- 
lies, and these into clans and tribes, and these into con- 
federacies, whence came nations, and whence may yet 
come, by the same natural tendency to unity out of di- 
versity, a single homogeneous race all over the earth— 
and he will hardly pay the theory the compliment even 
of laughing at it. And the corresponding linguistic 
view is really just as absurd; only, from the greater 
obscurity or unfamiliarity of the conditions involved, 
not so palpably absurd, and therefore not so ludicrous. 

Before closing this chapter, we must notice for a 
moment the meaning of the terms language and dialect, 
in their relation to one another. They are only two 
names for the same thing, as looked at from differ- 
ent points of view. Any body of expressions used by 
a community, however limited and humble, for the 
purposes of communication and as the instrument of 
thought, is a language; no one would think of credit- 
‘ing its speakers with the gift of dialect but not of lan- 
guage. On the other hand, there is no tongue in the 
world to which we should not with perfect freedom 


178 DIALECTIC VARIATION. 


and perfect propriety apply the name of dialect, when 
considering it as one of a body of related forms of 
speech. The science of language has democratized our 
views on such points as these; it has taught us that 
one man’s speech is just as much a language as another 
man’s; that even the most cultivated tongue that exists 
is only the dialect of a certain class in a certain locality 
—both class and locality limited, though the limits may 
be wide ones. The written English is one of the forms 
of English, used by the educated class for certain pur- 
poses, having dialectic characters by which it is distin- 
guished from the colloquial speech of the same class, 
and yet more from the speech of other classes or sections 
of the English-speaking community—and each one of 
these is as valuable to the comparative student of lan- 
guage as their alleged superior. But English and 
Dutch and German and Swedish, and so on, are the 
dialects of Germanic speech ; and the same, along with 
French and Irish and Bohemian, and the rest, are the 
dialects of the wider family whose limits we have 
drawn above. This is the scientific use of the terms; 
in the looseness of popular parlance, an attempt is made 
at the distinction of ‘degrees of dignity and importance 
by means of the same words, as when the literary lan- 
guage of a community is alone allowed the name of 
language, and the rest are styled dialects. For ordinary 
purposes the usage is convenient enough; but it has no 
acceptableness on other grounds; it forms no part of 
linguistic science. 


CHAPTER X. 
INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


Genetic classification. Indo-European family ; its names; its branches 
and their earliest records: Germanic, Slavo-Lettic, Celtic, Italic, 
Greek, Iranian, and Indian ; doubtful members. Importance of this 
family ; value of its study to the science of language. Time and 
place of original community impossible to determine. Scientific 
method of studying its structural history; form-making by compo- 
sition and ‘integration ;. sufficiency of the principle. Resulting doc- 
trine of original radical monosyllabism ; Indo-European roots. De- 
velopment of forms: structure of verb, of noun; pronouns; adverbs 
and particles; interjections, their analogy with roots. Question of 
order of development, and time occupied. Synthetic and analytic 
structure. 


Havine examined, with all the fullness which the 
space at our command allows, the foundation on which 
a genetic classification of the languages of the world 
reposes, we are ready to undertake a brief view of that 
classification, as established by the researches of linguis- 
tic scholars. We have seen that correspondence in the 
material of different languages, if existing in measure 
and kind beyond what can be accounted for as the re- 
sult of accident or of borrowing, is explainable only as 
due to the separate tradition of an originally common 
tongue, a tradition which preserved a part of the ori- 
ginal usages, while it modified or discarded other parts, 


180 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUACE. 


or introduced what was new, to such an extent as to 
obscure, and perhaps even to hide, the evidences of for- 
mer connection. As an example, we glanced at an out- 
line of the great family of related tongues to which 
our own belongs, and noticed a limited but sufficient 
specimen of the evidence on which is founded the gen- 
eral belief in its unity asa family. We have now to 
go on and lay down more definitely the constitution of 
this family, and to sketch its structure and its structural 
history. 

It is called, in the first place, by a variety of names, 
no one of which has fully established itself in general 
use. We will employ “ Indo-European,” as having on 
the whole the best claim; it was deliberately adopted 
by Bopp, the great expounder of the relations of the 
family, and is as widely used as any of the others. 
Most of Bopp’s countrymen now prefer “ Indo-Ger- 
manic,” for no other assignable reason than that it con- 
tains the foreign appellation of their own particular 
branch, as given by their conquerors and teachers, the 
Romans. Others, rejecting both these titles as cum- 
brously long, say instead “ Aryan,” which also has a 
wide and perhaps a growing currency ; the chief objec- 
tion is, that it properly belongs only to the Asiatic 
division, composed of the Iranian and Indian branches, 
and is still needed and widely used to designate that 
division. ‘‘ Sanskritic,” from the oldest and in some 
respects the leading language of the family, and “ Ja- 
phetic,” from the son of Noah to whom are attributed 
as descendants in the Genesis some of the people speak- 
ing its various dialects, are terms of limited and now 
obsolescent employment. 

The Indo-European family, then, is composed of 
seven great branches: the Indian, the Iranian or Per- 


GERMANIC BRANCH. 181 


sian, the Greek, the Italic, the Celtic, the Slavonic or 
Slavo-Lettic, and the Germanic or Teutonic. 

Taking these up in their inverse order, we have 
first the Germanic branch, in the four principal divi- 
sions already noted: 1. The Mceso-Gothic, or dialect 
of the Goths of Meesia, preserved only in parts of a 
Bible-version made by their bishop Ulfilas in the fourth 
century of our era, being long ago extinct as a spoken 
language. 2. The Low-German languages, still spoken 
in the north of Germany, from Holstein to Flanders, 
and across in the neighboring England, and including 
two important cultivated tongues, the Netherlandish 
and the English. English literary monuments go back 
to the seventh century, Netherlandish to the thirteenth; 
and there is an “ Old-Saxon” poem, the Heliand, or 
‘Savior, from the ninth, and Frisian literature from 
the fourteenth. 8. The High-German body of dialects, 
represented at the present day by only a single literary 
language, the so-called German, of which the literature 
begins with the Reformation, in the sixteenth century ; 
back of this, the New TiehiGecad period, lie a Mid- 
dle and an Old High-German period, with their litera- 
tures in various somewhat discordant dialects, reaching 
back into the eighth century. 4. The Sache 
division, written in the forms of Danish, Swedish, 
Norwegian, and Icelandic. The Icelandic monuments 
20 back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and are 
in point of style and content older than anything in 
High or Low German: the Edda is the purest and 
most abundant source of knowledge for primitive Ger- 
manic conditions. The Icelandic is also, especially in 
its phonetic state, the most antique of living Germanic 
dialects. Besides these literary remains, there are brief 
Runic inscriptions, generally of but a word or two, go- 


182 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


ing back, it is believed, even to the third or second cen- 
tury. 

The Slavonic branch has always lain in close prox- 
imity to the Germanic, on the east; it has been the 
last of all to gain historical prominence. Its eastern 
division includes the Russian, Bulgarian, Servian and 
Croatian, and Slovenian. The Bulgarian has the oldest 
records; its version of the Bible, made in the ninth 
century, in the same region where the Gothic version 
had been made five centuries earlier, has become the 
accepted version, and its dialect the church language, 
throughout the Slavonic division of the Greek church. 
The Russian is by far the most important language of 
the whole branch; it has remains from the eleventh 
century; some of the southern dialects present speci- 
mens froma yet remoter date. To the western division 
belong the Polish, the Bohemian, of which the Mora- 
vian and Slovakian are closely kindred dialects, the 
Sorbian, and the Polabian. There is nothing in Polish 
earlier than. the fourteenth century; Bohemian records 
are believed to go back to the tenth. 

This branch is often called the Slavo-Lettic, because 
it is made to include another sub-branch, the Lettic or 
Lithuanic, which, though considerably further removed 
from the Slavonic than any of these from the rest, is 
yet too nearly related to rank as a separate branch. It 
is composed of three main dialects: the Old-Prussian, 
extinct during the past two centuries, the Lithuanian, 
and the Livonian or Lettish ; all clustered about the 
ereat bend of the Baltic. The Lithuanian is the most 
important and the oldest, having records from the mid- 
dle of the sixteenth century. It exhibits in some re- 
spects a remarkable conservation of ancient material 
and form. 


: 


CELTIC AND ITALIC BRANCHES. 183 


The Celtic branch is one which from the beginning 
of history has been shrinking in extent, till it now oc- 
cupies only the remotest western edges of the immense 
region of western and central Europe which it formerly 
possessed. Not enough is known of the ancient Celtic 
dialects of northern Ae of Gaul, of Spain, to show 
what was their place in the cate ehe on of the 
branch. The preserved dialects compose two groups, 
usually called the Cymric and Gadhelic.. The Cymric 
includes the Welsh, with “glosses” from the ninth cen- 
tury or thereabouts, and a literature from the twelfth, 
but of which part of the substance is probably older, 
even up to the sixth; the Cornish, which became ex- 
tinct as a vernacular about the end of the last century, 
leaving a considerable literature nearly as old as the 
Welsh ; and the Armorican of Brittany, so nearly allied 
to the Cornish that it is believed to belong to fugitives 
from that part of England ; its earliest records are of 
the fourteenth century. The Gadhelic group includes 
the Irish, which has monuments going back to the end 
of the eighth century, the Scotch Gaelic, of which the 
earliest remains are attributed to the sixteenth, and the 
insignificant dialect of the Isle of Man. 

The Italic branch is represented among living lan- 
guages only by the Romanic dialects, so called as being 
all descended from the dialect of Rome, the Latin. We 
have already noticed some particulars affecting their 
history and their importance. They all rose at not far 
from the same period—namely, the eleventh to the thir- 
teenth centuries—out of the condition of local patois, 
products of the corruption of the popular speech while 
the Latin continued the language of the learned. Frag- 
ments of I'rench are oldest, coming from the tenth 
century ; its literature begins one or two centuries later ; 

9 


184 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


the earliest Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, are from the 
twelfth, or hardly earlier. These four are the conspicu- 
ous modern members of the group. But there was also, 
in the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, a rich litera- 
ture of the chief dialect of southern France, the Pro- 
vencal, which, except for a recent sporadic effort or two, 
has been ever since unused as a cultivated tongue. 
There exists, too, in the northern previnces of Turkey, 
in Wallachia and Moldavia, a broad region of less culti- 
vated Romanic speech, witness to the spread of Roman 
supremacy eastward: it is destitute of a proper litera- 
ture. Moreover, certain dialects of southern Switzer- 
land are enough unlike Italian to be ordinarily ranked 
as an independent tongue, under the name of Rheeto- 
Romanic, or Rumansh. 

The ancient members of the Italic branch, codrdi- 
nate with the Latin, were long ago crowded out of ex- 
istence ; but a few remains of them are still left, es- 
pecially of the Umbrian, north from Rome beyond the 
Apennines, and of the Oscan of southern Italy. The 
Latin itself, in its oldest monuments, reaches hardly 
three centuries beyond the Christian era, appearing 
there in a form which seems very strange, and is hardly 
intelligible, to those who have learned only the culti- 
vated dialect of the last century B. c. 

The Greek branch attains a much greater age, those 
masterpieces of human genius, the poems of Homer, 
being nearly or quite a thousand years older than our 
era. From about 300 x. o., all Greek is written in the 
Attic or Athenian dialect, as all modern German litera- 
ture in the New High-German; but before that time, 
as in the Old High-German period, each author used 
more or less distinctly his own local dialect ; and in this 
way, as well as, more widely but less abundantly, by 


: 
: 
: 


IRANIAN BRANCH. 185 


inscriptions and the like, we have a tolerably full repre- 
sentation of the local varieties into which the Greek 
had divided in prehistoric times. There is, of course, 
a similar variety of dialects now ; but only one is writ- 
ten, and it is called Modern Greek, or Rtomaic; it is 
less altered from the classic Greek than is the Italian 
from the Latin. Notwithstanding the wide sway of 
Greek civilization, the spread of Greek empire under 
Alexander and his successors, and the unexcelled char- 
acter of the language, the latter has had a limited and 
inconspicuous career as compared with the Latin: out 
of Greece itself, it is spoken only on the islands and 
shores of the Adriatic, and along the northern and 
southern edges of Asia Minor. 

The next branch is the Persian, or properly Iranian, 
since Persia is only one among the many provinces con- 
stituting the territory of Iran (Adryana, the home of 
the western Aryans). It has two ancient representa- 
tives: the Old Persian, or Achzemenidan Persian, of 
Darius and his successors; and the language of the 
Avesta, the so-called Zend, or Avestan, or Old Bactrian. 
The former, of determinate date (five centuries z. C.), is 
read in the cuneiform inscriptions, recently deciphered ; 
of the other, the date is unknown; it may be older or 
younger. The Avesta is the Bible of the Zoroastrian 
faith, of which the date and place of origin are obscure ; 
it is believed to reach beyond 1000 z. c. ; and if parts of 
the record are, as they claim to be, from Zoroaster him- 
self, they have this antiquity. The modern votaries of 
the religion, and the keepers of its sacred books, are the 
Parsis of western India, fugitives from Mohammedan 
persecution in their native land. With the Avesta, 
they have preserved a version of it in the Huzvaresh or 
Pehlevi, of the time of the Sassanids, a dialect of pe- 


186 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


‘ euliar and problematical character. ‘The Modern Per- 
sian literature, abundant and rich, begins from about 
A.D. 1000, after the country had been ground over in 
the Mohammedan mill. : 

These are the members of the main body of Iranian 
speech. The Kurdish is only a strongly-marked dialect 
of the same stock. The Ossetic, in a little province of 
the Caucasus, is plainly, but more distantly, related. 
The Armenian, of which the considerable literature goes 
back to the fifth century—but, it is recently claimed, 
with cuneiform fragments a thousand years or more 
older—is also of Iranian type. Finally, the Afghan, 
near the border of Iran and India, is usually reckoned 
as Iranian, but by some recent trustworthy authorities 
regarded as rather Indian. 

The branch of Indo-European language in India does 
not cover the whole of that vast territory ; the Dravid- 
ian race, which was doubtless crowded out by the in- 
trusive Aryans in the north, still occupies the main 
central part of the southern peninsula, the Dekhan. 
The earliest of Indo-European tongues is the Sanskrit, 
especially its earlier or Vedic dialect, the dialect of the 
religious hymns, which, with auxiliary literature of 
somewhat later date, became the Bible of the Hindus, 
the so-called Veda. At the period of the oldest hymns, 
the Sanskrit-speaking peoples appear to have been not 
yet in possession of the great Ganges basin, but nearly 
or quite confined, rather, to the valleys of the Indus ana 
its branches, in the northwestern corner, the region 
bordering nearest on Iran. The date is incapable of 
being determined with any exactness; probably it was 
nearly or quite 2000 zs. c. The classical Sanskrit is a 
dialect which, at a later period, after the full posses- 
sion of Hindustan and the development of Brahmanism 


ae t  aaaem Se 


INDIAN BRANCI. 187 


out of the simpler and more primitive religion and 
polity of Vedic times, became established as the literary 
language of the whole country, and has ever since main- 
tained that character, being still learned for writing and 
speaking in the native schools of the Brahmanic priest- 
hood. From the fact that inscriptions in a later form 
of Indian language are found dating from the third cen- 
tury B.c., it is inferred that the Sanskrit must at least 
as early as that have ceased to be a vernacular tongue. 
The next stage of Indian language, to which the in- 
scriptions just referred to belong, is called the Prakri- 
tic. One Prakrit dialect, the Pali, became in its turn 
the sacred language of southeastern Buddhism, and is 
still taught and learned as such in Ceylon and Farther 
India ; the others are represented partly in the Sanskrit 
dramas, as the unlearned speech of the lower orders of 
characters, and partly by a limited literature of their 
own. Finally, there are the modern dialects of India, 
numerous and various, but rudely classifiable under 
the three comprehensive names of Hindi, Mahratti, and 
Bengali, having literatures of more recent origin. The 
so-called Hindustani, or Urdu, is Hindi with a great in- 
fusion of Arabic and Persian words, introduced by Mo- 
hammedan influence. | 

The boundaries of this great family are more dis- 
tinctly drawn than those of any other. But they are 
not absolute or immovable. There are one or two 
isolated tongues in Europe which may yet be pro- 
nounced Indo-European. Thus, the Skipetar, or lan- 
guage of the Albanians, on that part of the west coast 
of European Turkey which lies close opposite the heel 
of Italy: it is believed to be the representative of the 
ancient Illyrian, and more probably Indo-European than 
anything else. And the Etruscan, the obscure and 


188 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


much-discussed tongue of that peculiar people with 
whose relations to the early Romans, until. finally con- 
quered and assimilated by Rome, every school-boy is 
familiar, after being assigned to almost every distant 
race on earth, is now (1874) declared Indo-European 
and Italican by scholars of such rank and authority that 
the conclusion must stand as probable until completely 
refuted. It is evident enough that in theory such cases 
of doubtful classification are to be expected. There is 
no limit to the degree to which a language may, by 
special disturbing causes, become altered in its material 
and structure, even to the effectual disguise of its orl- 
ginal relationships. 

There are many reasons why the Indo-European 
family is of predominant importance among the lan- 
guages of the world; why it has thus far received a 
very large share of the attention of linguistic scholars, 
and must always continue to receive, even if not the 
same share as hitherto, yet a larger than any other fam- 
ily. The least of these reasons is that it 1s our own 
family ; though that is, after all, no illegitimate plea in 
enhancement of the interest with which it is invested 
for us. Of more importance is the circumstance that 
it belongs to the race which has long been the leading 
one in the history of the world, and which at the present 
day, as for some time past, has not even arival. The 
grand and highly-developed institutions of great nations 
are those which most demand and best repay study. 
The tongues and the history of the Greeks and Romans 
are that part of antiquity which will continue to form, 
even as it constitutes at present, a leading subject in all 
liberal education. And the whole history of Indo- 
European language will have its share by reflection in 
this educational value, because it casts light on the study 


IMPORTANCE OF THIS FAMILY. 189 


of Greek and Latin, of the Romanic languages, of the 
Germanic languages, of the Slavonic languages, on all 
that is nearest and dearest to those nations which are 
pursuing the study. 

But there are other and more imperative reasons 
why the study of Indo-European language has been the 
training-ground of the science of language; why the two 
have almost grown up together, and in the minds of 
some have even perhaps been confused and identified 
with one another. The student has at best a most im- 
perfect and fragmentary record before him. If the 
whole history of human speech were represented by a 
great sheet of paper, the part of it to be. marked as 
known, or as accessible to direct knowledge, would be 
almost ludicrously small. for most human races, only 
the present spoken dialects lie within reach ; then a few 
lines of light run back into the past to various distances 
toward the Christian era; a much smaller number be- 
yond that point ; four or five, probably, into the second 
thousand years before Christ ; and only one, the Egyp- 
tian, to a time considerably remoter yet. And how 
much of language-history, as of human history in every 
department, may lie behind even that point, we are 
only recently beginning to realize. Such being the 
condition of the whole field, how was a fruitful begin- 
ning to be made except just as it has been made—name- 
ly, by taking up that body of historically-related facts 
which was widest in its range, deepest and most abun- 
dant in its penetration of the past, and most advanced 
in its development ‘out of original conditions? By 
grasping this and reducing it to manageable order, dis- 
covering the general hidden under the particular, tracing 
tendencies and laws, the student might hope to acquire 
the ability to deal with other like bodies of facts, of 


190 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


narrower range and offering less abundant facilities. 
The character of preéminence in this line belongs to the 
Indo-European, beyond dispute and beyond comparison : 
where we have equal or greater penetration of the past, 
as in Egyptian, Chinese, and the Semitic tongues, there 
is either (as in the two former) a peculiar jejuneness of 
development, or at any rate (as in the last) a variety 
and wealth which is greatly inferior. To blame philolo- 
gists, therefore, for their devotion hitherto to Indo- 
European study is in the highest degree unreasonable ; 
one might as properly blame historians for their deyo- 
tion to the study of European civilization and of its 
sources in the past. To cast reproach upon them, more- 
over, for their attention to the past, to the partially 
understood records of extinct and almost forgotten 
tongues, and to declare that the true and fruitful field 
for linguistic research is the living and spoken dialects 
of the present day, is not less narrow and erroneous. It 
overlooks the character of linguistics as a historical sci- 
ence ; it forgets that the explanation of the present is 
by the past, and that the record of by-gone conditions 
casts on existing conditions a light that nothing else could 
yield. More precisely, it exaggerates and pushes for- 
ward unduly the equally true fact that the comprehension 
of the past is complete only by the help of the present. 
It would be most unfortunate to check the zeal of those 
who are submitting present language to the most rigor- 
ous investigation, especially on its phonetic side, or to 
cast the slightest reflection on the deep and far-reach- 
ing value of their work; there is hardly another more 
promising direction of linguistic inquiry: only they, on 
their side, should refrain from impliedly contemning 
their predecessors, and should realize that they are strik- 
ing in now when the way is prepared for making their 


e 

P| ‘ 
: : “ - ' ‘ c 
ee ee eee ee —_ : , 


a 


IMPORTANCE OF ITS STUDY. 191 


labors fruitful. So the minute study of the customs, 
institutions, beliefs, and myths of rude peoples now ex- 
isting was, not long ago, comparatively a mere matter 
of curiosity ; it gains its most valuable bearing from the 
study of civilization in its historical development. It 
was of little use to watch and study nebule until geolo- 
gy and astronomy together had learned so much about 
the constitution and history of our solar system as to 
have found out how to interpret the facts observed. 

So also, in the claims here put forth as to the pri- 
ority and preéminence of the Indo-European tongues as 
a subject of linguistic study, there is nothing which 
must be in the slightest degree understood as depreciat- 
ing the importance of the study of other families, even 
its indispensability to the comprehension of Indo-Euro- 
pean language itself. The science of language is what, 
its name implies, a study of all human speech, of every’ 
existing and recorded dialect, without rejection of any, | 
for obscurity, for remoteness, for lowness of develop- 
ment. The time has come when questions are rising 
in abundance in the history of Indo-European speech 
which cannot possibly be answered until the languages 
of lower organization are more thoroughly understood. 
And it must be distinctly laid down as a fundamental 
principle in linguistics, that no fact in human expression 
is fully estimated, until it is seen in the light of related 
facts all through the domain of universal expression. 
Only, it is not possible, in philology any more than in 
other branches of study, to help letting facts arrange 
themselves along certain leading lines, and converge 
their light where light is most desired. 

We have reached, as was seen above, the certain 
conclusion that all the known Indo-European lan- 
guages are descended from a single dialect, which must 


199 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


have been spoken at some time in the past by a single 
limited community, by the spread and emigration of 


which—not, certainly, without incorporating also bodies 


of other races than that to which itself belonged by ori- 
gin—it has reached its present wide distribution: even 
as a similar process, in historical times, has brought its 
two leading modern branches to fill the New World, a 
region almost vaster than that which it occupies in the 
Old. Of course, it would be a matter of the highest 
‘nterest to determine the place and period of this im- 
portant community, were there any means of doing s0; 
but that is not the case, at least at present. As for the 
time, the less said about that the better, in this transi- 
tional period of opinion as to the age of man on the 
earth. The question whether the first man was born 
only 6,000 years ago, or 12,000, or 100,000, or 1,000,000, 
as the new schools of anthropology are beginning to 
claim, is one of which the decision must exercise & con- 


trolling influence on that which we have here in view. | 


As for the testimony of language itself, there is none, 
of any authority; the philologists will doubtless claim 
that they do not see how to compress the growth of 
Indo-European language into the shortest of the periods 
named, but they have not yet found a rule with which 
to measure the time they actually need. To give even 
a conjecture at present would be foolish. 

Nor is the place perceptibly easier to determine. 
Man has ever been a migratory animal, and if he has 
had a million years, or a tenth part of the number, to 
wander in, it must be next to impossible to fix the 
starting-point of any division of the race. How little 
could be inferred as to the history of movement of the 
Celts from their present distribution! If some barbar- 
ous race had conquered and exterminated or absorbed 


PLACE OF INDO-EUROPEAN UNITY. 193 


the Germans of the continent, what erroneous conclu- 
sions might not be drawn from their presence only in 
Scandinavia and Iceland! And there are probabilities 
of just as baffling occurrences in the history of the Indo- 
Europeans. Men have long, and on well-known grounds, 
been accustomed to look upon the southwestern part of 
Asia as the cradle of the human race; and, mainly un- 
der the influence of this opinion, so long rooted that it 
sways the minds even of those who reject the authority 
of the testimony on which it is founded, it is by many 
asserted with great confidence that the Hindu-Kush 
mountain-region, or that Bactria, is the Indo-European 
cradle: the only bit of tangible evidence which they are 
able to allege being that that is the region where the 
Jranians and Indians separated, and that the Iranian and 
Indian dialects are the most primitive of the family. But 
to plead this is equivalent to maintaining that slowness 
or rapidity of change in language is dependent on stabil- 
ity or change of place in the speaking community : which 
isso grossly wrong that it needs no refutation. In fact, 
the condition of these languages is reconcilable with any 
possible theory as to the original site of the family. As 
to the interconnections of the different branches with one 
another, the best scholars have for some years past been 
settling down upon the opinion that the separation of 
the five European branches from one another must have 
been later than their common separation from the two 
Asiatic branches, which latter then continued to exist as 
one community almost down to the historical period. 
Upon this last point, there is unanimity of opinion; the 
oldest forms of Persian and Indian speech are as closely 
like one another as, for instance, the more dissimilar of 
the Germanic dialects; the two branches are ranked to- 
gether under the common name of “ Aryan;” and the 


194 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


Indian branch is thought to have parted from the com- 
mon home in northeastern Iran not very much earlier 
than 2000 z.c. Within the European grand division, 
the Germanic and Slavonic are by nearly all regarded 
as specially related; opinions are more nearly divided 
as to whether the Celtic is a wholly independent branch, 
or closely akin with the Italican: In all this there is 
evidently nothing which should point our eyes definitely 
‘toward an original home. The separation of Aryan 
from European may just as well be due to a spread 
and migration of the former into Asia as of the latter 
into Europe: and localities in Europe as well as in 
Asia have actually been pitched upon by eminent 
scholars. But it is useless to pretend to come to a 
definite conclusion where the data are so indefinite. 
Evidences of real weight bearing on the question may 
possibly yet be found; but certainly none such have 
been hitherto brought to light. 

Owing to the exceptional abundance of the material 
for study of the history of Indo-European speech, and 
the amount of study which has been devoted to it, it is 
far better understood than is the history of any other 
division of human language. Partly, therefore, because 
of the high intrinsic interest of the subject, and partly 
as a standard of reference in the treatment of the struct- 
ural growth of other languages, we have to follow out 
in a little detail, though still with all possible brevity, 
the ascertained history of the common foundation of the 
Indo-European languages. | 

But we have first to consider the question—if, in- 
deed, it can be called a question—as to how the prehis: 
torical periods of language are to be investigated. Not 
even the Indo-European has more than a small part of 
its history illustrated by contemporary documents: how 


METHOD OF PREHISTORIC STUDY. 195 


are we to learn anything beyond the point where the 
records fail us? The answer, it is believed, is a plain 
and a confident one: we have to study the forces at 
-work under our observation, and the methods of their 
working; and we have to carry them back into the past 
by careful analogical reasoning, inferring from similar 
effects to similar causes, just as far as the process can be 
made to work legitimately, never assuming new forces 
and modes of action except where the old ones are abso- 
lutely incapable of furnishing the explanation we are 
seeking—and, even then, only under the most careful 
restrictions. This is the familiar method of the modern 
inductive sciences ; and its applicability to the science of 
language also is beyond all reasonable doubt. The paral- 
lel between linguistics and geology, the most historical of 
the physical sciences, is here closest and most instructive 5 
and it has often been resorted to for illustration. ‘The 
geologist infers the mode of formation of ancient sand- 
stones and conglomerates from that of modern sand- 
banks and gravel and pebble-beds; and so on, through 
the whole series of strata, sedimentary and eruptive; he 
accounts for the occurrence of fossils by the engulfing 
or burying of extant species. And the true geologic 
method has been so thoroughly worked out, and is so 
strictly applied, that the scientific man who abandons it, 
and resorts to arbitrary. hypotheses, even to account for 
facts which for the time seem unexplainable by ordi- 
nary means, is at once put down as “ unscientific,” and 
bidden to wait until the growth of knowledge shall 
bring around the possibility of solving his problem, 
if it shall finally be found soluble, in an admissible 
way. | 

Of course, the circumstances and conditions of action 
of the same forces may differ greatly. The admission 


196 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


of the unity of geologic history by no means implies 
that the earth has always worn the same aspect as at 
present ; it is even a prevailing opinion among geolo- 
gists that the whole solar system was once a nebulous 
mass of whirling vapor; but this result is reached by 
the inductive method. The essential unity of linguistic 
history, in all its phases and stages, must be made the 
cardinal principle of the study of language, if this is to 
bear a scientific character. To assume outright, as some 
do, either explicitly or impliedly, that ancient modes of 
language-making were and must have been different 
from modern, and that the former are not to be judged 
by the latter, would, if linguistic science were as ma- 
tured and well-established a branch of study as geology, 
be enough to exclude the assumer from the ranks of 
scientific linguists. Here, again, the difference of con- 
ditions, of the grade of historic development, has to be 
fully allowed for; and the student may arrive at the 
recognition of a primitive condition of language to 
which the present is as unlike as a civilized country, 
teeming with the public and private works of its inhab- 
itants, is unlike the wilderness through which the say- 
age roams; or even as the existing cosmos is unlike the 
nebulous chaos; yet the present must be regarded as 
the consequence of a gradual accumulation of results in 
one unbroken line of action. We must beware, too, of 
claiming that we understand the present forces and their 
action in all points so thoroughly that we can judge the 
past by them completely, or even that processes which 
would now strike us as anomalous may not come here- 
after to appear regular; but we are authorized to refuse 
to admit them until a clear case shall be made out in 
their favor; they are never to be granted as postulates. 
Now we have seen above, in the chapters devoted to 


SYNTHETIC FORM-MAKING, 197 


detailed examination of the changes of language, that 
the general effort of language-making is toward the pro- 
vision of expression, for the needs of communication 
and the uses of thought, by such means as lie most avail- 
ably at hand; that a prominent part of the movement 
is the reduction of coarser and more physical, material, 
sensible designations to finer and more formal uses, both 
by constant shifts of meaning, by the attenuation of 
words once of full material meaning to the value of 
form-words, and by the conversion of words formerly 
independent into formative elements, suffixes and pre- 
fixes, signs of modified meaning or of relation attached 
to and forming part of other words. In the earliest 
traceable condition of our language, the use of forma- 
tive elements was the prevailing means of denoting 
relations, so much so as to constitute the distinctive 
characteristic of the common Indo-European language ; 
and to explain this feature is to explain Indo-European 
growth. | 

It was in the simple practice of composition that we 
found (p. 120 seg.) the germ of synthetic form-making ; 
and we noticed a number of real forms as made by this 
means, with the help of only those tendencies which are 
universally prevalent in human speech. The adverbial 
endings ly and (French) ment, the tense-signs d and 
(French) a#, the derivative suffixes less and dom, and so 
on, are, in all respects, precisely as true and as good for- 
mative elements as anything in Indo-European speech ; 
it is only the historical student, not the speaker, who 
knows them as different from the s of loves and the th 
of truth, which go back for their origin to a period 
greatly remote in comparison. And all form-making 
of which we know anything in the historical period is 
of this same kind, by external accretion; all the cases 


198 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


of an apparently different character (we exemplified 
them by man and men, réad and réad, sing and sang) 
being demonstrably inorganic, accidental, results of the 
‘putting to use of a difference of secondary value, 
wrought out by phonetic change from forms originally 
made by concretion. 

This being so, we are required by the principles of 
inductive investigation to endeavor to make this sole 
recognizable method of formation found active in his- 
torical times explain the growth of Indo-European lan- 
guage in the ancient times. If it is sufficient, we are 
not only not called upon, but actually forbidden, to 
bring in any other method to aid; or, at any rate, noth- 
ing but the most direct and cogent evidence can have 
the right to compel our admission of any other. And 
such evidence is by no means to be found in our simple 
inability to trace any given element or elements, or even 
a great many such, to the independent words out of 
which they grew, and to describe the series of changes 
of form and meaning which converted the one into the 
other. The linguistic record is too hopelessly frag- 
mentary for that. As every period in the changeful 
life of the earth denudes or covers up or dislocates a - 
part of the record of geological succession, so the 
changes of every age contribute to break the continu- 
ity of linguistic succession, in every part—in the trans- 
fers of meaning, in the formation of words, in the 
making of means of derivation. While there is so 
much in the peculiar and recent formations of even the 
Germanic and Romanic languages that baftles the in- 
quirer and seems to defy explanation, it would be most 
unreasonable to expect that words and forms of vastly 
more ancient growth will be completely and in all parts 
amenable to analysis. If we can find any trustworthy 


PRIMITIVE ROOT-PERIOD. 19g 


evidences of the operation of the method of combina- 
tion in the earliest synthetic forms, we have the right 
to assume it, in default of proof to the contrary, to 
have been the sole operative principle, then as well as 
later. . 

And it is claimed by the leading school of compara- 
tive philology that the principle in question is actually 
sufficient to account for the whole structure of Indo- 
European language; that the latter presents no forms 
which demand the admission of any other genesis than 
by addition of element to element; that wherever, by 
our analytical processes, we succeed in detaching from a 
word a subordinate part, indicating some modification 
or relation of a radical idea, there we are to recognize 
the trace of a formerly independent word, which has 
lost its independence and become an affix, by the same 
processes which have made love-did into loved, true-like 
into truly, habere habeo into aura, verd mente into vrat- 
ment, and soon. 


But in this doctrine is involved another very impor- | 


tant one: that, namely, of a primitive body of mono- 
syllabic roots as the historical beginnings of Indo- 
European speech-development. Its necessity as a corol- 
lary from the former is clear enough: if all formative 
elements come by accretion and integration, then only 
that can have been original which is left when these 
have been stripped off, to the very last one: and what 
is left is the root; and it is, in our family of language, 
a monosyllable. This is the doctrine actually held by 
most students of language; the dissidents are few, and 
have nothing to say, in defense of their unbelief, ex- 
cept what is easily refuted as misapprehension or want 
of logical consistency. Though at first sight repellent 
to some, it involves nothing that has a right to trouble 


' 
i 
: 


200 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


the scientific inquirer, any more than the acceptance of 
a primitive state of rudeness with reference to the arts 
of life or the condition of knowledge. And as there 
are races now living on the earth which have never 
gained command of more than the simplest tools, modes 
of dress and shelter, and the like, so (as we shall see 
more particularly in the twelfth chapter) there are those 
which have never developed their language out of this 
radical stage. If we see in later times conjugational 
and declensional inflections formed and brought into 
use, there can be no invincible obstacle in the way of 
our reasoning back to a time when such things did not 
exist; if we see parts of speech like prepositions, con- 
junctions, and articles coming into being, we may regard 
as possible a period when the first distinction of parts of 
speech was made. Whether such possibilities were ever 
realities, is a matter to be determined by sufficient scien- 
tific evidence. , 

It is to be noticed that this doctrine does not commit 
us to the recognition of any actually traceable list of 
roots as being the beginnings of development in our 
family. If it shall be shown hereafter—as it is already 
shown, or at least made probable, with regard to some— 
that any of the elements now generally regarded as 
roots are of composite structure, containing a formative 
element fused with a root (as in our count, cost, preach, 
etc., noticed above, p. 55), this will only push the name 
and quality of roots one step further back. The firm 
foundation of the theory of roots lies in its logical ne- 
cessity as an inference from the doctrine of the histori- 
cal growth of grammatical apparatus. It is to be no- 
ticed further that the question of roots as the histori- 
cal beginnings of language is quite distinct from that 
of the origin of language, which we do not take up until 


ROOTS. SOF 


later (fourteenth chapter): the one is exclusively lin 
guistic, the other partly anthropological. 

The Indo-European roots, then, are the elements of 
speech which existed prior to the whole development of 
the means of grammatical distinction, before the growth 
of inflection, before the separation of the parts of 
speech. They indicated each some conception in entire 
indefiniteness as concerns its relations, neither viewed 
as the concrete name of an object, nor as attribute only, 
nor as predicate ; but as equally ready to turn to the 
purpose of any of the three. This is a state of things 
which we, with our habits of speech and thought, find 
it very hard to realize, but which is brought compara- 
tively within reach of our apprehension by making 
acquaintance with existing tongues of a low grade of 
development. The roots, however, are not all of one 
homogeneous class; there is a little body of so-called 
pronominal or demonstrative roots which are distin- 
guished from the rest as signifying position or direction 
with reference to the speaker, rather than any more 
concrete quality. They are very few, and of the sim- 
plest phonetic form: a vowel only, or a consonant with 
following vowel. That they are ultimately distinct 
from the roots of the other class, and were not rather 
developed out of these by attenuation of meaning, as 
form-words in the later stages of language-history, many 
students of language are very loath to believe, and not 
without reason ; but the distinction is one which must, 
it seems, at any rate be admitted as antecedent to the 
whole growth of Indo-European forms; nor have the 
attempts to identify the one class with the other been 
as yet at all successful. The point is one of which the 
complete solution will probably be possible only when 
the languages of lower. order shall have come to be more 


| 


} 


: 


(ae 


202 : INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


widely and deeply understood ; perhaps the early devel- 
opment of such a class of form-words was the first sign 
_of that linguistic aptitude which has always distin- 
guished this family, and prepared the way for its after- 
eon. The other class, commonly called verbal or 
predicative roots, were significant in general of such 
acts and qualities as are apprehensible by the senses, 
' and were much more numerous, counting by hundreds: 
examples are sté (Greek torn, Lat. stare, our ‘ stand, 
etc.), dd, ‘give’ (SiSap, dare), par, ‘pass’ (aepdw, ex- 
per-ior, fahren, fare, ete.), wid, ‘see’ (oida, video, weiss, 
wot, etc.), and so on. 

An early (perhaps the first) and most important act 
in the history of linguistic development out of these 
rather scanty beginnings was that whereby a separation 
was made between noun (substantive and adjective) and 
verb. The essence of a verb is that it predicates or 
asserts; and the establishment of a distinct form by 
which predication shall be signified has by no means 
been reached in all languages. There are many tongues 
which do not formally distinguish givimg (adjective or 
substantive) and gi/é from gives: they put the subject 
and predicate side by side, as ‘he giver, ‘he good,’ and 
leave the mind to supply the lacking copula. The mak- 
ing of a verb is nothing more than the establishment 
of certain combinations of elements in an exclusively 
predicative use, the supplying of a copula in connection 
with them and not with others. . This was accomplished 
by adding certain pronominal elements to the verbal 
element: dd-mi, dd-si, da-ti; the former having al- 

_ready gained at least a quasi-personal significance, as 
designating that which is nearer or remoter. Precisely 
how we shall explain dém, for instance—whether as 
meaning more ‘ give I, or ‘ giving (adj.) I, or ‘ giving 


VERBAL FORMS. 203 


(subst.) mine,’ or ‘giving here’—seems a matter not 
worth contending about; since, at the period in ques- 
tion, noun and adjective and verb were equally present 
in the one element, and pronoun and adverb. in the 
other ; and there was as yet no distinction of ‘I’ and 
‘mine. ‘The combinations adduced above gave three 
verbal persons ; they were made exclusively singular in 
number by the addition of a plural and a dual, usually 
explained (through many difficulties of detail) as formed 
by a composition of pronominal elements in the end- 
ing: mast, for example, being ma-sz ‘I [and] you,’ i. e. 
‘we. The forms thus made contained no implication 
of time, were not properly a “tense;” but a past was 
by-and-by made by prefixing an adverbial element, the 
“augment” of the Greek, pointing to a ‘then’ as ad- 
junct of the action: a-dd-mi, ‘then give I, i. e. ‘I 
gave ;’ and the form, by reason of the accented addition 
at the beginning, was shortened at the end, to ddam 
(Skt. ddim, Gr. é6wv)—whence the distinction between 
secondary and primary endings, conspicuous in some of 
the languages of the family. But yet another tense, of 
completed action, was made by reduplication or repeti- 
tion of the root: dd-dda-mi, ‘ give-give I,’ i. e. ‘I have 
given’ (the reduplication being then variously abbre- 
viated) ; and this in Latin and Germanic has become the 
general preterit, the augment-tense having been lost ; 
our sang, held, etc., are its descendants. As handed 
down to us, however, few of the “present” tenses of 
Indo-European verbs are of the simple formation above 
illustrated ; more usually, the root appears in some way 
extended, either by another reduplication (Skt. daddémi, 
Gr. diéops), or by the addition of sundry formative 
elements (Lat. cer-no, cre-sco, Gr. dap-vyn-pt, Selk-vu-[, 
ete., etc.): all of them supposed to have been at first 


204. INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


means empioyed for denoting the continuousness of an 
action, like our am gwving, though they later lost their 
restriction to this sense. In some verbs, along with the 
new present and its continuous preterit or proper “im- — 
perfect,” the preterit and moods of the simpler root 
were retained in use, with a more undefined past mean- 
ing, becoming the Greek (and Sanskrit) “second aorist” 
(as édav, dddm, beside imperfect édidwv, ddaddm). For 
other verbs, an accordant tense was made apparently by 
composition with a second root as, ‘be,’ making what is 
called in Greek the “first aorist.” Besides these, a 
future, also supposed to contain the same auxiliary, was 
made before the separation of the branches, and is best 
retained in Greek and Sanskrit; the full form of its 
sutix is syd@mi: Sanskrit dd-syami, Greek déo (older 
dwoiw), ‘I will give. There were some imperative 
persons, with no special mood-sign, but with peculiar. 
endings. Of other moods, there were a subjunctive 
and an optative, marked by insertions between root and 
ending, of somewhat doubtful character. Then, finally, 
there was a reflexive or “ middle” voice for all these 
various forms, with its characteristic in the personal 
endings themselves: an extension of them, prevailingly 
explained as a repetition, once with subjective value, 
once with objective. 

This appears to have been the entire fabric of the 
Indo-European verb prior to the separation of the 
branches. It has been variously preserved, contracted, 
expanded, in the later history of the branches. The 
Sanskrit has preserved most faithfully the outward 
forms; the Greek has best retained the original uses, 
and has added most, so that its verb is far the richest in 
the family. The Latin lost much, but added a great 
variety of modern formations. The Germanic lost all 


NOUN AND ADJECTIVE. 205 


save present and perfect, with their optative (called by 
us subjunctive), and with the imperative; apart from 
the preterit with did, often already referred to, its new 
additions have been made in the way of analytic com- 
bination. To follow out further the details of the verb- 
history, interesting as the task would be, would take us 
too long. 

The genesis of the noun as a part of speech, in its 
two forms, substantive and adjective, was implied in ~ 
that of the verb: when one set of forms became dis- 
tinctly verb, the rest were left as noun. And every- 
thing in Indo-European speech from predicative roots 
is by origin either verb or noun, a form either of con- 
jugation or of declension. On the other hand, the fur- 
ther we go back, the less are substantive and adjective 
distinguished from one another ; they are made by the 
same suflixes, they share the same inflection: things, in 
fact, are named from their qualities; and whether the 
quality-denoting word shall be used attributively or 
appellatively is at the outset a matter of comparative 
indifference ; though the two come finally to be distinct 
enough. The characteristic of the noun is the case-end- 
ing, as that of the verb is the personal ending; case 
and number are to the noun what person and number 
are to the verb, fitting it to enter into definite relations 
in the sentence. The Indo-European cases are seven, 
besides the vocative, which is not a case in the same 


‘sense with the rest, since it stands in no syntactical 


relation with anything else. The accusative is the to- 
case, marking that toward which the action of the verb 
is immediately directed, and hence becoming also the 
case of the direct object ; the ablative is the from-case ; 
the locative, the a¢- or in-case ; the instrumental, that of 
adjacency or accompaniment, then of instrument or 


206 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


means—the by-case, in both senses of by. Then the 
dative is the for-case, and the genitive the 9fcase, that 
of general relation or concernment. The nominative, 
finally, is the case of the subject, and its ending, so far 
as at present appears, more formal than that of any 
of the others; the vocative is most often accordant 
with it, and has, at any rate, no inflectional sign of its 
own. 

The subject of the genesis of the case-endings is 
much more obscure than the history of the verb. The 
genitive suffixes show most signs of kindred.with the 
ordinary suffixes of derivation. Pronominal elements 
seem clearly visible among some of the rest ; but every 
point is too doubtful to allow of summary presentment ; 
and for more than this there would be no room here. 
How the distinctions of number are combined with 
those of case is by no means plain; the endings of sin- 
gular, dual, and plural have the air of being indepen- 
dent of one another, nor are there demonstrable indica- 
tors of number, such as in languages of lower type are 
often found inserted between theme and ending. Yet 
the earliest language is mainly free from that diversity 
of modes of inflection according to which, in the middle 
period, words are arranged in different “ declensions.” 
First, uniformity, at least approximate, of declension in 
all words; then correspondence in the declension of 
themes having the same final; then, the characteristic 
finals being lost, a confusion of declensions—such has 
been the-general history of development. 

One more matter of distinction, that of gender, is 
so mixed up with those of case and number as not to be 
completely separable from them. The problem of the 
treatment of this element in Indo-European language is 
still very far from being completely solved. Its foun- 


GENDER. 207 


dation must, of course, lie in the distinction of sex in 
those creatures which have conspicuous sex; but such 
constitute only an exceedingly small part of the crea- 
tion ; and the distinctions of gender involve everything 
that ata and in a manner mnie is only in the small- 
est part accordant with natural sex. The world of un- 
traceably sexual or of unsexual objects is not, as with 
us, relegated to the indifferent “neuter ;” great classes 
of names are masculine or feminine partly by poetical 
analogy, by an imaginary estimate of their distinctive 
qualities as like those of the one or the other sex in the 
higher animals, especially man; partly by grammatical 
analogy, by resemblance in formation to words of gen- 
der already established. At any rate, in the common 
Indo-European period, all or nearly all attributive words 
were inflected in three somewhat varying modes, to in- 
dicate generic distinctions; and the names of things 
followed one or other of these modes, and were mas- 
culine. or feminine or neuter. The distinction was 
partly in the case-ending, partly in the derivative theme 
or base, though there was hardly a suffix, derivative 
or inflectional, that was rigidly of one gender only ; it 
was most marked as characterizing the feminine; mas- 
culine and neuter were hardly separated except in the 
nominative and accusative cases. 

The noun-inflection was shared also by the pronouns, 
in all the three varieties of case, number, and gender. 
In those demonstrative words, however, which acquired 
a specific personal character, as dendtine the speaker 
and the spoken-to, gender was undistinguished. And 
the words of pronominal origin exhibit certain irregu- 
larities of inflection, different from those of the general 
mass of nouns. 


Although a case-ending of itself makes a noun, and 
10 


208 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


there are many primitive Indo-European nouns which 
are made by such alone, the great mass of them have 
other elements interposed between root and ending, 
which we call suffixes of derivation; and these even 
come, in time, to be divided into two well-marked 
classes: primary, or such as are appended directly to 
verbal roots; and secondary, or such as are added only 
after other derivative endings. Of these, likewise, too 
few among the most ancient ones are recognizable in 
their independent character, and traceable through their 
changes of application, to allow of our illustrating here 
the method of their growth. But though the subject 
is full of obscurity in its details, there is no mystery in 
the principles involved: the processes which have 
formed modern suffixes are fully capable of having pro- 
duced also the ancient ones. 

As the two sides of meaning and application in the 
predicative or verbal roots are verb and noun, so in the 
demonstrative (which do not make verbs) the two sides 
may be said to be pronoun and adverb. From the latter 
class come those earliest words of place and direction, 
readily convertible also into words of time, which are 
of adverbial quality. Yet even these are claimed by 
some to be properly case-forms of pronouns; and the 
rule is laid down that everything in language is by ori- 
gin an inflected form either of verb or of noun. At any 
rate, the class of adverbs, when once brought into 
existence, receives abundant accessions of this kind, 
through its whole history, down to the latest, from 
which we have already drawn examples (pp. 41, 122). 
Prepositions, in our sense of the term, are of yet more 
recent origin, created a separate part of speech by the 
swinging away of certain adverbs from apprehended 
relation to the verb, and their connection in idea with 


PARTICLES AND INTERJECTIONS. 209 


the noun-cases which their addition to the verb had 
caused to be construed with it. We see them coming 
into distinct existence in the oldest languages of the 
family, as the Sanskrit; and their increase of number 
and consequence ever since is apparent. Conjunctions, 
though we nowhere find them absolutely wanting, are 
of secondary origin, being among the most characteristic 
products of the historical development of speech. To 
be able to put clauses together into periods, with due 
determination of their relation to one another, is a step 
beyond the power to put words alike determinately to- 
gether into clauses. | 

These are the Indo-European “parts of speech :” 
that is to say, the main classes of words, having restrict- 
ed application and definite connection, into which the 
holophrastic (‘ equivalent to a whole phrase *) utterances 
of a primitive time have by degrees become divided ; 
the separated parts, members, of what was once an un- 
distinguished whole. But there is one other class, the 
interjections, which are not in the same and the proper 
sense a “ part of speech ;” which are, rather, analogous 
with those all-comprehending signs out of which the 
rest have come by evolution. A typical interjection is 
the mere spontaneous utterance of a feeling, capable of 
being paraphrased into a good set expression for what 
it intimates: thus, an ah / or an oh / may mean, accord- 
ing to its tone, ‘I am hurt,’ or ‘am surprised,’ or ‘am 
pleased, and so on; only there is no part of it which 
means one of the elements of the statement while 
another part means another. Yet, such creatures of 
conventional habit in regard to expression have we be- 
come by our long use of the wholly conventional ap- 
paratus of language, that even our exclamations have 
generally a conventional character, and shade off into 


210 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


exclamatory utterance of ordinary terms. A man’s feel- 
ings must be very keenly touched in order to draw out 
of him a purely natural interjection, in which absolute- 
ly no trace of the acquired habits of his community 
shall be perceptible. And the interjectional employ- 
ment of common words, or of incomplete phrases, is a 
very common thing in the general use of speech ; emo- 
tion or eagerness causing the usual set framework of the 
sentence, the combination of subject and predicate, to 
be thrown aside, and the conspicuous or emphatic ele- 
ments to be presented alone—a real abnegation of the 


historical development which, under the growing do- 


minion of consciousness over instinct and of reason 
over passion, has wrought the sentence out of the root. 

Tn this too brief and imperfect sketch of the history 
of Indo-European speech, no attempt has been made to 
define the order in which the parts of the inflectional 
development followed one another. Success is not to be 
hoped for in any such attempt until the history of less 
highly developed and of almost undeveloped languages 
shall be far better understood than it is at present. 
For, to reason these matters out on Indo-European 


ground alone is at any rate impossible: the period lies 


too far back, its evidences are too fragmentary and 
difficult of interpretation; we are not competent to 
judge them. As to the impossibility of determining 
the absolute time occupied by the history, enough, per- 
haps, has been already said: that it should have taken 
less than a very long time, there is no reason whatever 
for believing. The whole was a series of successive 
steps, of which one led to another and these to yet 
others; a growth of habits which were in themselves 
capacities also; and each step, the formation of each 
habit, was a work of time, not less in the olden time 


“a ~ -_* 


SYNTHESIS AND ANALYSIS. 211 


than it would have to be in the modern period : though 
whether a work of not less time, we can hardly venture 
to say, since the rate of growth may fall under the gov- 
ernment of conditions which we cannot, as yet, fully 
appreciate. 

There has also been, so far as synthetic structure is 
concerned, an evident climax, followed by an anti-cli- 
max, in this history. During the immense prehistoric 
period, and prior to the separation of the branches from 
_ one another, the inflectional system of the noun, and 
less distinctly that of the verb, reached a fullness which 
has since undergone a gradual reduction. Not that 
there has been generally a diminution of ability to ex- 
press distinctions ; but means of another kind have been 
more and more resorted to: auxiliaries, form-words, in- 
stead of suffixes, formative elements in words; and 
these later means we are accustomed to call analytic, as 
distinguished from synthetic. He might have loved 
_ and he will be loved, as contrasted with their Latin 
equivalents amavisset and amabitur, may be taken as 
typical examples of the two modes of expression. This 
fact has been adduced as evidence against an original 
radical condition of language, by some scholars, who 
prefer to assume a primitive period of excessive poly- 
syllabism. But with evident injustice; the argument 
would be a good one only if no such thing as the mak- 
ing of forms were known in language, but only their 
wearing-out and loss. If we see how collocation and 
combination and integration and mutilation and cor- 
ruption all work in succession on the same material in 
every part of language, producing forms and destroying 
them again, it is plainly within the competency of the 
changing circumstances and habits of the language-mak- 
ing community to give the history of development a 


212 INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE. 


climactic form. The constructive methods, once in- 
augurated, are made effective up to the provision of a 
sufficient apparatus for the expression of relations; and 
for a time, until this point is reached, their efficiency is 
greater than that of the destructive processes, which 
also have been all the time at work—then the relation 
is gradually reversed, and there is more wearing-out 
than replacement by synthetic means, though this latter 
also never entirely ceases; collocations remain such, 
instead of going on to combination and integration ; 
there is still abundant new provision, but it is of 
another sort. The habit of construction has changed ; 
though to a very different degree in the divided parts 
of the great community. If there is a law which 
governs this climactic phase of development, it has not 
yet been worked out and exhibited; nor is it likely 
eyer to be so, although we can trace some of the deter- 
mining influences which have contributed to bring about 
the effect. 

It is time now for us to leave the family which has 
so long occupied us, and to review, in a much briefer 
manner, the structure of the other grand divisions of 
human language. But, founding upon the example of 
historic growth which we have just been studying, it is 
desirable first to turn our attention to some general 
features of the doctrine of linguistic structure. 


——— 


CHAPTER XI. 


LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE: MATERIAL AND FORM IN LADN- 
GUAGE. 


The distinction of material and form; examples: number, gender, case, 
etc., in nouns; comparison and concord of adjectives; time, mood, 
and other distinctions in verbs. Form by position. Inferences. 
National and individual prejudices ; comparative value of different 
languages. A language represents the capacity of its makers. 
Rude beginnings of all speech. 


\aarinestor™ ieee 


To understand, in a general way, the structure of 
Indo-European speech, in its character and its uses, is 
tous no difficult task; the subject is already more or 
less familiar. Though the parts of this structure 
which our own language still possesses are but frag- 
mentary, they are at least akin with the rest, and lead 
the way to the knowledge of the whole. It is compara- 
tively a question only of less and more; and many of 
us know the more, as exhibited in those tongues of the 
family which have retained a larger share of the origi- 
nal structure, or have supplied its loss more fully. We 
cannot, however, go on profitably to examine the char- 
acter of other languages without discussing a little, 
by way of introduction, the principles of grammatical 
structure. It will be possible to do this, sufficiently for 
our purpose, in a wholly simple and unpretentious man- 
ner, drawing illustration from phenomena with which 


214 STRUCTURE IN LANGUAGE. 


almost every one is familiar, and especially out of our 
own English. | 

The distinction of the more material and the more 
formal, relational parts of expression has been noticed 
and illustrated by us often already. The s of brooks, 
for example, is formal in relation to brook as material ; 
the added letter indicates something subordinate, a 
modification of the conception of brook, the existence of 
it in more than one individual: it turns a singular into 
a plural. Jfen has the like value as regards man, the 
means of making the same formal distinction haying 
come to be of a different kind from the other, an in- 
ternal change instead of an external. Lvooks and men 
are not mere material; they are “ formed” material, 
signs for conceptions with one important characteristic, 
number, added. But then, by simple contrast with 
them, brook and man are also “ formed ;” each implies, 
not by a sign, but by the absence of an otherwise 
necessary sign to the contrary, restriction to a single 
article of the kind named. According to our habits of 
speech, no one of these words, no one of our nouns in 
general, can be used without a distinct recognition by 
the mind of the number of things signified. 

But there are many other definable qualities or cir- 
cumstances belonging to brooks and men besides num- 
ber. They are, for example, of very different sizes. 
And we have a similar formal means, though only a 
very limited one, of signifying this: a small brook is to 
us a brooklet ; a small man, a mannikin. It is perfect- 
ly conceivable that a language should take constant 
cognizance of this element of size, distinguishing always 
the large, the medium, and the small individuals of a 
kind, by diminutives: and magnificatives. The Italian 
almost does as much as that, by a peculiarity which has 


GENDER. 215 


grown up in it since it became a separate language. 
But while we call a small brook a dbrooklet, we call a 
large one a creek, or a river, or something of that sort ; 
or we apply small and large to it, in all their varying 
degrees: and so with giant and dwarf, and all the 
limiting adjectives, as applied to man. All this classi- 
fication which is made by independent words is as truly 
expression of form as is that which is made by aflixes. 
Another equally real quality, the differences of which 
are apparent in every case that comes before the mind, 
is, in many animals, age; and we can say man, lad, 
boy, child, infant, ete., as horse and colt, cow and calf, 
and their like; and the Latin senex and German grews 
show the extension of the same system in the other 
direction, where we have to use the method of descrip- 
tion by independent words. 

Once more, mam in its distinctive sense indicates a 
male animal, and we have a different word, woman, for 
a female of the same kind ; and so all through the list 
of animals in which sex is a conspicuous or an impor- 
tant distinction: as brother and sister, bull and cow, 
ram and ewe: nor is there a language in the world 
which does not do the same. Only, as we have already 
seen, our own family of languages (along with two or 
three others) has erected this distinction of sex into a 
universal one, like number, making it atest to be ap- 
plied in the use of every word; breaking away from 
the actual limits of sex, and sexualizing, as it were, all 
objects of thought, on grounds which no mortal has 
yet been wise enough to discover and point out in de- 
tail. And, though we in English have abandoned the 
artificial part of the system, we retain its fundamental 
distinction by our use of he, she, and 7; the test of sex 
is to us a real and ever-present one. The modern Per- 


or 


216 STRUCTURE IN LANGUAGE. 


sian has lost from his language even that degree of gen- 
eric distinction ; and to him, as to the Turk or the Finn, 
whose ancestors never acknowledged any grammatical 
gender, it seems no less strange to use one pronoun for 
a male being and another for a female than it would 
seem to us to use one for a small, or a young, or a near, 
or a white object, and another for a large, or an old, or 
a remote, or a black object. And he has really reason 
on his side; it is our usage that is the exceptional one, 
and needs justification. There is in the nature of - 
things no necessity for our choosing among the various 
accidents of a conception any particular ones, to the 
exclusion of the rest, as subjects of grammatical dis- 
tinction —although, of course, there may be reason 
enough why one is practically better worth distinguish- 
ing than another. There is a second, somewhat anal- 
ogous yet not identical, distinction made by us, also 
solely by the use of pronouns—namely of who and 
which or what—between. persons and non-persons ; and 
the American Indians have one between things animate 
and things inanimate, with (as in the case of our gen- 
der) abundant figurative and personifying transfer: | 
either of these is perhaps as valuable ‘in itself, and as 
capable of higher uses, as is the Indo-European distine- 
tion of the three genders. 

We will notice only one more item in connection 
with the noun, its cases. Our language has preserved 
to most of its nouns their old genitive case, though not 
without restriction of the limits of its former uses. 
And in the pronouns we distinguish the object from 
the subject or nominative case: he him, they them, ete. 
_ By this difference, the distinction of subject and object 
relation is kept so clearly before us that we transfer it 
in apprehension to the whole class of nouns, and reckon 


CASES. 217 


them also as possessing objective cases, though there is 
really none such in the language. We do not recognize 
a dative, though we have some really dative construc- 
tions—as in “I give him the book”—because there is 
not in use even one dative of different form from the 
accusative. Just so, the Latin and Greek reckon ac- 
cusatives neuter, though these are not in a single in- 
stance different from the nominatives, because the two 
cases are usually unlike in other words; so the Latin 
reckons an ablative plural different from the dative, 
because there is in a part of its words an ablative sin- 
gular different from the dative. This transfer of a 
formal distinction only partially made to the words in 
which it is not made at all is an important feature in 
the history of forms. Our. two or three cases seem to 
compare but ill with the Sanskrit seven; yet these 
compare as ill, in one sense, with the Scythian fifteen 
or twenty: and, on the one hand, we are able, by the 
help of another instrumentality, to express all that is 
expressed by either Sanskrit or Scythian ; while, on the 
other hand, we imply a great deal more than we or 
they distinctly express; if we were to use different 
signs for all the shades of case-relation which we can 
recognize by analysis in our speech, we should have to 
multiply our list of prepositions many times. 


For a part of our adjectives of quality, we have 


forms (strictly, derivative rather than inflectional) de- 
noting two “degrees” of increment: high, higher, 
highest ; they seem to have been at the beginning 
rather intensive than strictly comparative. But, as 
means of comparison, they cover only a small part 
of the conceivable ground, and cover it only rudely. 
The possible degrees of a quality are indefinitely nu- 
merous, and there are descending as well as ascending 


218 STRUCTURE IN LANGUAGE. 


grades, which have in theory an equal right to notice: 
many of them we clearly mark by our analytic substi- 
tutes for the old derivatives; and we frame such kin- 
dred means of expression as are exemplified by reddish 
and bluish, German réthlich and bléulich (‘redlike, 
ete.: resembling the quality, but not quite it), French 
rougedtre and bleudtre. Most of the later tongues of 
our family still retain that adaptedness of the qualify- 
ing adjective, in gender and number and case, to the 
noun qualified, which, inherited from the time when 
adjective and substantive were not separated, was char- 
asteristic of their ancestors; to this we preserve noth- 
ing whatever that is correspondent; that an adjective 
should change its form on account of the character of 
the noun it belongs to is as strange to us as to many 
languages it is that the verb should change its form on 
account of the character of the subject of which it 
predicates something. 

In fact, we have almost reduced to a nullity also the 
concord of the verb and its subject. How there came 
to be such, we have seen in the foregoing chapter: the 
endings were the actual subject-pronouns themselves ; 
and the distinction of person and number in the verb 
was the necessary ‘concomitant and result of that in the 
pronouns and nouns. Nor is it yet quite a nullity: 
while we say J love, but thow lovest and he loves, and 
while they love stands over against Ae loves, so long shall 
we continue, by an apprehended extension of these 
clearly-felt distinctions, to reckon three persons and two 
numbers in all our verbal inflection. But our triple 
distinction of persons is far from exhausting the possi- 
bilities of personal relation; many tongues have a 
double first person plural, one inclusive and one exclu- 
sive of the person or persons addressed : one we which 


VERBAL FORMS. 219 


means ‘I and my party’ as opposed to you; and one 
that means ‘my party and yours,’ as opposed to all 
third persons. Others, again, distinguish genders in 
verbal inflection: ‘he loves’ has one ending, ‘she loves’ 
has another. We have seen that some older languages 
of our family have a dual number; and it would be 
quite as proper in theory, only not so manageable in 
practice, to have a whole decimal system of numbers, 
just as of numerals. 

But the attendant circumstances which present them- 
selves for inclusion in verbal expression, and in one or 


another language find expression, are simply number- 


less; and the richest verbal scheme that was ever put 
together takes account of only a part of them, even 
when supplemented by the resources of analytic phrase- 
ology. To us, the element of time is the conspicuous 
and pressing one; the denoting of an action appears 
almost to require an implication of tense-relation. Yet 
many languages do not regard this element as calling 
for inclusion in the fundamental structure of the verb 
rather than others; and they leave it to be inferred 
from the connection, or intimated by external means, 
particles, auxiliaries, as we on our part treat other ele- 
ments which they weave into the verbal structure. To 
any given act of speaking, for example, there cleaves 
some qualification of time; but so also of place, of 
manner, of purpose. Equally modifications of the in- 
definite act of speaking are speaking repeatedly or 
habitually, rapidly, with violence, under compulsion, 
for another, or causing, ceasing, appearing to speak, 
declaring another to speak, speaking to one’s self—and 
so on, indefinitely: and these, or many of them, are 
actually incorporated in derivative verbal forms by 
races who treat the tense-element less elaborately than 


SM ee ORT 


220 STRUCTURE IN LANGUAGE. 


we. And our tense-making is on the smallest scale, as 
compared with the infinite possibilities of tense-dis- 
tinction. We have not even, as some languages have, 
a nearer and remoter past, a nearer and remoter future. 
That a thing was done long ago is as true a temporal 
relation as that it happened in past time at all; but we 
intimate only the latter by an inflection, and the former 
by relational words; and therefore, to our way of think- 
ing, he who wants the inflection has too little, and he 
who converts the other into an inflection has too much. 
Our triple forms for each tense—Z love, L do love, L am 
loving—by their incessant use, and the necessity con- 
stantly imposed on us of choosing among them, keep 
before our minds certain distinctions which are com- 
paratively unnoticed in French or German; yet they 
are in the French and German minds also, and if any 
of them rises to prominent importance, those languages 
have sufficient means of intimating them. It is good 
English or German to say “I picked up the book that 
lay there;” but to the I‘renchman it would be a gross 
blunder to use the same tense for the instantaneous act 
of picking up and the continuous condition of lying; 
the difference is clearly involved in our thought as well 
as his; only our language does not compel our atten- 
tion to it. The case is quite the same with our moods, 
those means of defining the contemplated relation be- 
tween subject and predicate, or modifications of the 
copula. There are infinite shades of doubt and con- 
tingency, of hope and fear, of supplication and exaction, 
in our mental acts and cognitions, which all the syn- 
thetic resources of Greek moods, with added particles 
and adverbs, which all the analytic phraseology of 
English, are but rude and coarse means of signifying. 
And an Algonkin verb makes a host of distinctions 


PRINCIPLES. . 221 


which are so strange to us that we can hardly learn to Lf 


appreciate them yaar defined. 

There is one other mode of formal distinction which 
demands a moment’s notice from us: namely, position. 
In “you love your enemies, but your enemies hate 
you,” the distinction of subject and object is dependent 


a 


| 


solely on position, and is given by that means with all | 


necessary clearness. In a language of which the inflec- 
tions are so much worn out as are ours, this method 
counts for much; and there are tongues in which it is 
of even superior importance. Those, on the other 
hand, which have a greater abundance of inflections 
possess a freedom of arrangement which to us is sur- 
prising, and almost puzzling. 

The principal conclusions intended to be suggested 
by this brief exposition, and to be made of use in com- 
paring the structure of various languages, are, it is be- 
lieved, sufficiently clear. In the first place, the realm 


of formal relation is infinite, unexhausted by the formal 
resources of even the richest language, or of all lan- | 


guages: however much may be expressed, there is 
vastly more of the same kind left unexpressed, to be 
inferred by the intelligent mind from the perceived 
conditions of the particular case, or passed over as unes- 
sential to the ordinary purposes of communication— 
which is, at the best, only a rude and fragmentary 
means of putting one mind, or heart, into communion 
with another. There are no relations to which a lan- 
guage must necessarily give expression ; there are only 
certain ones which are more naturally suggested, of 
which the expression is more practically valuable, than 
others: and what these are, we can learn only from the 
general study of languages; our own educated prefer- 
ences are no trustworthy guide to them. In the second 


a 


222 STRUCTURE IN LANGUAGE. 


place, there is no absolute dividing-line between what 
is material and what is formal in a language; material 
and form are relative words only, names for degrees, 
for poles of a continuous series, of which the members 
shade into one another. And, as we ‘saw in the fifth 
chapter, the grandest internal movement in a growing 
and improving language is that from more material to 
more formal uses, whereby both words and phrases take 
on a less gross and physical meaning, even to the ex- 
tent of being attenuated into form-words, or, in com- 
bination with other elements, into formative elements 
—both alike indicators of relation. Hence, in the 
third place, the means of formal expression are of the 
utmost variety ; they are not to be sought in one de- 
partment of a language only, but in all; they are scat- 
tered through the whole vocabulary, as well as concen- 
trated in the grammatical apparatus. Deficiency in one 
department may be compensated, or more than com- 
pensated, by provision of resources in another. There 
is no human tongue which is destitute of the expression 
of form ; and to call certain languages, and them alone, 
“form-languages,” is indefensible, except as the term. 
may be meant to describe them as possessing in a higher 
or exceptional degree a quality which they really share 
with all the rest. 

In judging other languages, then, we have to try to 
rid ourselves of the prejudices generated by our own 
acquired habits of expression, and to be prepared to 
find other peoples making a very different selection 
from our own of those qualifications and relations of 
the more material substance of expression which they 
shall distinctly represent in speech, and also sharing 
these out very differently among the different modes 
of formal expression. It is a common error of uncul- 


COMPARATIVE MERIT. 223 


tivated, and of narrowly though highly cultivated peo- 
ples, to regard themselves alone as speakers, and all 
others as babblers, “barbarians,” unintelligent because 
to them unintelligible talkers. We are in no danger 
of doing that ; but we are in danger still of over-esti- 
mating the peculiar traits of our speech, and depreciat- 
ing those of others’ speech. Nothing is harder than to 
be perfectly impartial here ; to judge the comparative 
merit of one’s own and of another language requires a 
grasp of all the particulars involved, a power of analy- 
sis and comparison, and a freedom from both national 
and individual prejudice, of which only exceptionally 
endowed and exceptionally trained minds will be capa- 
ble. Even great scholars are liable here to great errors. 
There are eminent English-speaking philologists who 
regard English analysis as the only reasonable or “ logi- 
cal” mode of expression, and look down on Greek 
synthesis as something characteristic of. a rude and un- 
developed intellectual condition ; there are many more, 
doubtless, of various nationality, who undervalue the 
resources of English, and are loath to assign a high 
rank to a tongue which has lost or thrown away so 
much of its inherited structure. 

On the whole, perhaps the best and most. trust- 
worthy test of the value of a language is, what its 
speakers have made it do. Language is but the instru- 
ment for the expression of thought. If a people has 
looked at the world without and within us with a pene- 
trating and discerning eye, has observed successfully the 
resemblances and differences of things, has distinguished 
well and combined well and reasoned well, its language, 
of however apparently imperfect structure, in the tech- 
nical sense of that term, enjoys all the advantage which 
comes from such use; it is the fitting instrument of an 


Q24 STRUCTURE IN LANGUAGE. 


enlightened mind. There is nothing in the grammatical 
form of either Greek or English that may not be de- 
oraded to serve only base uses. 

In another sense also a language is what its speakers 
make it: its structure, of whatever character, represents 
their collective capacity in that particular direction of 
effort. It is, not less than every other part of their civ- 
ilization, the work of the race; every generation, every 
individual, has borne a part in shaping it. Whether, 
however, the language-making capacity can be corre- 
lated with any other, so that we may say, a highly- 
organized speech could not be expected from a histor- 
ical community whose work in this or that other respect 
shows a deficiency of excellence, is extremely doubtful ; 
thus far, at any rate, nothing of value has been done in 
that direction. ‘The Chinese is, as we shall see in the 
next chapter, a most striking example of how a commu- ~ 
nity of a very high grade of general ability may exhibit 
an extreme inaptitude for fertile linguistic development. 
We may suitably compare this with the grades of apti- 
tude shown by various races for plastic or pictorial or 
musical art, which by no means measure their capacity 
for other intellectual or spiritual products. No uncult- 
ured people ever, spends consciously any time or effort 
upon its speech ; this cannot be thought over and worked 
up into better shape; it must come by the way, as inci- 
dent to the work of thought, as result of unreflective 
effort at communication. That race which possesses 
most of the right kind of regulative force will turn out 
a product that is admirable; and the contrary. 

Only, also, the possibility of a radical change of his- 
tory, a new turn of development, is different at different 
periods of growth. After a certain stage of advance in 
definite and established expression is reached, the con- 


LANGUAGE MADE BY ITS SPEAKERS. R225 


servative forces, depending on acquired habits of speech, 
are too strong to be overcome, and the language goes on 
forever on the course which the directing hands of the 
earlier generations have determined. This is a point 
upon which we have no right yet to speak with definite- 
ness; we may hope some day to understand it better: 
to be able, for example, to lay down exactly what condi- 
tions the stagnation of Chinese speech. There are other 
departments of civilization in which a race does not 
always show itself able to develop unaided its own best 
capacities. The Celtic and Germanic tribes, which have 
proved themselves equal to taking leading places in the 
world’s history, might have remained comparative bar- 
barians to the present time, if they had not received 
Greek civilization, as shaped over and reorganized by 
Rome. But though a nation may borrow culture from 
its neighbors, it does not in the same way borrow lin- 
guistic development; no race ever adopted a new mode 
of structural growth for its native speech by imitation 
of another; though many a community has, under suffi- 
cient external inducement, exchanged its native speech 
for another; and borrowing, as we have already seen, 
especially accompanies transfer of culture, and is capable 
of going on to such an extent as vastly to enrich the 
borrowing speech, and fit it for higher uses. 

While a people’s capacities and acquirements make 
its language, we must not fail to notice also the con- 
trary truth, that its language helps to determine its in- 
tellectual character and progress. The powerful reflex 
influence of language on mental action is a universally 
admitted fact in linguistics; to allow it is only to allow 
that rooted habits, learned by each generation from its 
predecessor, have a controlling influence on action— 
which is axiomatic. But the subject belongs to a much 


226 STRUCTURE IN LANGUAGE. 


more advanced and elaborate discussion of language 
than this work makes any pretense of being; and it has — 
never yet been worked out fruitfully. 

On the analogy of Indo-European speech alone we 
have a right to assume, at least provisionally, that what- 
ever of inflective structure may be possessed also by 
other languages, whatever of formal and formative 
apparatus they may contain, of any kind, has been 
wrought out by somewhat similar methods, from a 
similar initial stage of rude and gross material, If 
there shall be found languages in which this is demon- 
strably not the case, we can modify or abandon the 
assumption hereafter; but it will require very definite 
and cogent evidence to make such demonstration. or 
language is an instrumentality; and the law of sim- 
plicity of beginnings applies to it not less naturally and 
necessarily than to other instrumentalities. Some seem 
to imagine that to regard men as having begun to talk 
with formless roots, which we now arrive at ‘by ab- 
straction”” from the material of living languages, is like 
regarding them as having begun the use of physical 
instruments with the bare abstract motive powers—the 
inclined plane, the wheel, the pulley. But such a par- 
allel is as absolutely erroneous as anything can be: the 
analogues of the motive powers, rather, would be the 
attributive and predicative relations, the assertive, inter- 
rogative, and imperative modes, and their like. The 
analogue of the root is the stick or the stone which 
was indubitably man’s first instrument: a crude tool or 
weapon, used for a variety of purposes to which we 
now adapt a corresponding variety of much more intri- 
cate and shapely tools. And to hold that formed words, 
divisible into radical and formative elements, were first 
in the uses of speech, is just as defensible as to hold 


BEGINNINGS OF STRUCTURE. QQ 


that men began to labor with hammers and saws and 
planes and nails, and to fight with iron-headed lances 
and bows and catapults. In each single root was pres- 
ent at the outset—as may be present in a single inter- 
jectional monosyllable now—a whole assertion, or in- 


erage Ota 


quiry, or command, to which the tone and accompanying | 
gesture, or the mere circumstances of its utterance, fur- ’ 


nished the suflicient interpretation: just as in the stick 
or stone was present—and may, on an emergency, be 
made present still—a variety of instruments or weapons. 

Again, to maintain, for the purpose of explaining 
the variety of later languages, that the expressions of 
the earliest men must have been potentially different in 
the different races, as the seeds or germs which develop 
into different animals or plants are different; that a for- 
mative principle must have been present in the material 
of one language and not of another; that in the ele- 
ments which came afterward to be put to formative 
uses there was from the beginning a form-making func- 
tion inherent, and so on—all this is sheer mythology. 
One might as well claim that in the stick or stone, as 
used by some races, there was lying perdu a well-mem- 
bered instrument or machine, which somehow developed 
out of it in the hands of its users, and that in the wood 
and metal of certain regions were inherent machine- 
making functions, not possessed elsewhere. Language 
comes to be just what its users make it; its offices cor- 
respond to their capacities; if there is a higher degree 
of formative structure in one language than in another, 
the reason lies in the difference of quality of the two 
races, their different capacity of education and growth ; 
not at all in the character of the beginnings from which 
both alike started, nor of the materials which both alike 
have ever since had at command. 


CHAPTER XII. 


OTHER FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE: THEIR LOCALITY, AGE, 
AND STRUCTURE. 


Classification by families. Scythian or Ural-Altaic or Turanian family ; 
doubtful members of it. Monosyllabic family: Chinese, Farther 
Indian, etc. Japanese. Malay-Polynesian; other insular families : 
Papuan, Australian. Dravidian. Caucasian languages. Semitic 
family; question of its relationships. Hamitic: Egyptian, ete. 
South African or Bantu. Middle African languages. Basque. 
American Indian languages. 


We have called a certain body of languages a fami- 
ly, the Indo-European. The name “family,” we saw, 
was applied to it by strict analogy with the use of the 
same term elsewhere: the languages in question had 


/ been found, on competent examination, to show good 


f 
; 
| 


| 
| 


evidence of descent, from a common ancestor. We had, 
however, to confess that the limits, even of this best- 
known of families, cannot be traced with absolute pre- 
cision; one or another tongue, not now thought of, or 
else doubtfully regarded, as Indo-European, may one 
day make good its title to a place with the rest. We 
have also seen that, by the operation of completely com- 
prehensible causes, no language on earth exists in a state 
of absolute accordance through the whole community 
that speaks it; it is a group, even if a very limited one, 
of related dialects. This being the case, it is the first 


CLASSIFICATION BY FAMILIES. 229 


task of the comparative study of languages to divide all 
human speech into families, by recognizable signs of | 
relationship: only thus can there ba made any such | 
examination of their character and history as shall lead 
the way to the other results which the science seeks to 
attain. And such a classification has in fact been made. 
It is, of course, in parts only a tentative and provisional 
arrangement, held liable to rectification, both by addi- 
tion and by the giving up of what is now held even 
with a fair degree of confidence: for it not seldom hap- 
pens that lines which in a half-light appear definite and 
fixed dissolve away when full illumination is turned 
upon them. The cautious philologist combines only so 
far as trustworthy evidences take him, leaving the rest 
to be settled when more knowledge is won. 

As a matter of fact, moreover, linguistic scholars 
have hitherto been able to put together into families 
only those languages which have a common structure. 
That is to say, only tongues which have shared at least 
a part of their growth out of the original radical stage 
(provided they have left it) have yet been found to 
exhibit reliable evidence of relationship. No one, it is 
evident, has a right to declare @ priort that there cannot 
remain even from the initial stage sufficient signs of 
common descent, in branches whose whole structural 
development has been separate: in fact, philologists are 
feeling about among the roots of certain families for 
such signs, and may one day succeed in bringing them 
to light; but thus far no definite results have been 
reached. We shall have occasion to note in the next 
chapter the difficulties which environ the inquiry, and 
to point out the reasons why, on a large scale, it is 
likely to fail of success. 

The first family, then, which we take up is that of 


930 - FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


which the leading branches occupy more or less of 
European soil, alongside those of our own kindred. 
Of these branches there are three. The first, the 
Finno-Hungarian, or Ugrian, is chiefly European: it 
includes the Finnish, with the nearly related. Esthonian 
and Livonian, and the remoter Lappish in the Scandi- 
navian peninsula; the Hungarian, an isolated dialect in 
the south, wholly environed by Indo-European tongues, 
but of which the intrusion into its present place, by im- 
migration from near the southern Ural, has taken place 
within the historic period; the dialects from which the 
Hungarian separated itself, the Ostiak and Wogul, in 
and beyond the Ural; and the tongues of other related 
tribes in eastern Russia, as the Ziryanians, Wotiaks, 
Mordwins, ete. The Finns and Hungarians are the 
only cultivated peoples of the branch: there are frag- 
ments of Hungarian language from the end of the 
twelfth century, but the literature begins only four 
centuries later, and scantily, the people formerly using 
the Latin much more than their own speech for literary 
purposes; the earliest Finnish records are of the six- 
teenth century; the language has a mythic poem, the 
Kalevala, written down in this century from the mouths 
of popular singers, of especial originality and interest. 

The second branch, quite nearly related with this 
one, is the Samoyed, belonging to a Hyperborean race, 
which stretches from the North Sea to beyond the 
Yenisei, and up the course of this river into the central 
mountains of the continent, the Altai range, probably 
the starting-point of its migrations. It has no culture, 
nor importance of any kind. 

The third branch, the Turkish or Tartar (more 
properly Tatar), only touches and overlaps the Euro- 
pean frontier at the south. The race to which it be- 


SCYTHIAN FAMILY. 231 


vu 


longs, after having been long the restless foe of the 
Iranians on their northeastern frontier, finally, after the 
Mohammedanizing of Persia, forced its way through, 
worked on westward, captured Constantinople in the 
fifteenth century, and was arrested there only by the 
combined and long-continued efforts of the powers of 
central Europe. It is stretched out at present from 
European Turkey (in which it nowhere forms the mass 
of the population) over a great part of central Asia, 
and even, in its Yakut branch, to the mouth of the dis- 
tant Lena. The Yakuts, Bashkirs, and Kirghiz, the 
Uigurs, Usbeks, and Turkomans, and the Osmanlis of 
Asiatic and European Turkey, are some of the princi- 
pal divisions of the race. The Uigurs, getting their 
alphabet and culture from Nestorian missionaries, were 
the first to produce a scanty literature, as far back as 
the eighth to the tenth centuries; the southeastern peo- 
ples have records (“ Jagataic ”) of the fourteenth to the 
sixteenth ; the abundant and varied but little original 
literature of the Osmanlis dates from the time of their 
European conquests; it is full of Persian and Arabic 
materials, | 

Respecting the family relationship of these three 
branches there is no question. As to the common name 
by which they shall be called, usage is very diverse. 
“ Turanian ” is perhaps more frequent than any other, 
but there are grave objections to its genesis and appli- 
cation, and, till use shall pronounce more definitely in 
its favor, it is hardly fit to be employed in scientific 
description. “ Ural-Altaic,” “Scythian,” “Tartaric” 
are others, employed by various authors: the first has 
its advantages, but is unwieldy, and implies rather more 
knowledge as to the movements of the family than we 
actually possess; we may use here “ Scythian,” provi- 

11 


232 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


sionally, and disclaiming for it any marked or partisan 
preference. 

Scythian language is the type of what is called an 
“agolutinative” structure, as distinguished from the 
“ inflective” Indo-European. By this is meant that the 
elements of various origin which make up Scythian 
words and forms are more loosely aggregated, preserve 
more independence, than do the Indo-European ; there 
is far less integration of the parts, with disguise and 
obliteration of their separate entity. All our own for- 
mations, as has been seen, begin with being agglutina- 
tions; and such words as wn-tru-thful-ly preserve an 
agelutinative character; if all our words were like it, 
there would be no marked difference between the two 
families as to this fundamental item. or the Scythian 
formative elements are also only in small part trace- 
able to the independent words out of which they have 
grown; they are, like the Indo-European affixes, mere 
sions of relation and of modification of meaning. But 
Scythian formations do not go on to fuse root and end- 
ing, even to the replacing of an external by an internal 
flection. Asarule, the root maintains itself unaltered 
in the whole group of derivatives and inflection, and 
each suffix has an unchanged form and office: whence, 
on the one hand, a great regularity of formation, and, 
on the other hand, a great intricacy. Thus, in Turkish, 
for example, lar (or ler) forms plurals everywhere ; to 
it are added the same case-endings which alone make 
the singular cases ; and pronominal elements indicating 
possession may be yet further interposed between the 
two: so ev, ‘ house,’ ev-den, ‘from a house, ev-iim-den, 
‘from my house,’ ev-ler-iim-den, ‘from my houses.’ 
The case-relations indicated by these endings or suflixed 
particles are numerous, in some dialects rising to twenty. 


SCYTHIAN FAMILY. 233 


The verb exemplifies the same peculiarity still more 
strikingly: there are half a dozen modifying elements 
capable of insertion, singly or in variously combined 
groups, between root and endings, to express passive, 
reflexive, reciprocal, causative, negative, and impossible 
action ; so that from the simple root sev, for example, 
we may make the intricate derivative sev-ish-dir-dl-e-me- 
mek, ‘not to be capable of being made to love one an- 
other,’ which is then conjugated with the various forms 
of the simple verb; thus bringing the possible inflec- 
tive forms from one root up to a number which is im- 
mense as compared with any Indo-European verb. 

But the distinction of verb and noun in these lan- 
guages is much less original, fundamental, and sharply 
drawn than with us. The verbally used forms are, 
rather, but one step removed from nouns used predi- 
catively, with subjective or possessive pronominal ‘ele- 
ments appended. The types of verbal forms are, for 
example, (Turkish) dogur-um, ‘striking I i. e. ‘I 
strike,’ and dogd-wm, ‘act of striking mine, i.e. ‘I 
have struck ;’ and the third person is without ending : 
dogdi, ‘he has struck,’ dogdi-ler, ‘ they have struck,’ 
literally ‘striking, ‘strikings. To say this is not to 
say that these languages have no real verb; since to 
make a verb it needs only that certain forms be set 
apart and strictly devoted by usage to the expression of 
the predicative relation; but it does imply a decided 
inferiority in the grade of clearness of this most fruit- 
ful of formal distinctions, and may shade off into a 
total absence of it. Of tenses and moods such as those 
‘instanced above, and others made with auxiliaries, these 
languages have a plenty; and their variety of resource 
in derivatives is very great; so that all the formal ap- 
paratus is provided which is needed for shaping by the 


234 3 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


right usage into a sufficient instrument of thought; and 
the most cultivated of the dialects do indeed come so 
near to “inflection” that their falling short Se it is 
hardly more than nominal. 

The Scythian adjective is as bare of inflection as the 
English ; and there is an utter absence of gender as 
one of the categories of noun-inflection or of pronomi- 
nal distinction, just as in Persian. Relatives and con- 
junctions are also nearly unknown, the combinations 
of dependent clauses being, as is natural in languages 
where the verb is a less definite part of speech, rather 
by case-forms of verbal nouns. These constructions 
make upon us the impression of great intricacy, and in- 
vert that order of the members of the sentence to which 
we are accustomed. 

In the phonetic structure of these languages, the 
most striking trait is the so-called “ harmonic sequence 
of vowels.” There are, namely, two classes of vowels, 
light and heavy, or palatal (e, ¢, #, 6) and other (qa, 0, 
u); and it is the general law that the vowels of the 
various endings shall be of the class of that in the root, 
or in its last syllable—thus marking the appurtenance 


and dependency of the endings in their relation to the: 


root in a manner which, though undoubtedly at first 
euphonic only (like the Germanic wmdlaut), has lent it- 
self usefully to the purposes of formal distinction. 
Every suffix, then, has two forms, a light and a heavy: 
we have al-mak, but sev-mek ; ev-ler, but agha-lar, and 
so on. In some dialects this assimilative process is of a 
wonderful degree of intricacy. 

There is field and scope in these languages for a 
comparative grammar of the highest interest and im- 
portance ; but no one has yet taken up the work seriously 
and comprehensively; the science of language has ad- 


we 


ACCADIAN LANGUAGE. 235 


vanced far enough to demand its execution, which, it is 
to be hoped, will not be long deferred. One obstacle 
in its way, the lack of really ancient records, from a 
time comparable to that of the early Indo-European 
documents, is likely to be removed, if recent claims 
shall prove well-founded. There is, namely, in the 
Mesopotamian and Persian records, a third language, 
the so-called Accadian, of greatly disputed character 
and connections, but which has been for some time past 
persistently declared by one party of its students to be 
Ugrian, an ancient dialect of the F inno-Hungarian 
stock, and a grammar of it has lately been written (by 
M. Lenormant) on that understanding. This is a point 
of very high importance, but we have no right yet to 
consider it fairly settled ; it is doubtful whether so ex- 
act and comprehensive knowledge and so sound method 
have yet been applied as to yield a trustworthy result. 
What adds greatly to the interest of the matter is that 
this language and its community are demonstrably the 
original owners of the cuneiform mode of writing, 
which has been borrowed and adapted by both Semitic 
and Indo-European peoples: it would follow, then, that 
the original basis of culture in that great and important 
centre of the world’s civilization was Scythian. We 
have no right to deny the possibility of this; at the 
same time, it is so inconsistent with what we know of 
the activity of the race elsewhere that we have a right 
to regard it with provisional incredulity, and to demand 
a full demonstration before yielding it our belief. 
Along with the three branches we have been con- 
sidering are generally ranked, as belonging to the same 
family, two others, the Mongolian and the Tungusic : 
but the evidence for their inclusion with the rest is 
confessedly less positive, and we are justified in holding 


236 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


a doubtful position as regards them. Their languages 
are of a much lower grade of development, verging 
even upon monosyllabic poverty, having nothing which 
can be called a verb, possessing even no distinction of 
number and person in their predicative words. ‘This 
may well enough be the result of arrested growth, but 
whether it demonstrably is so is another question, to 
which we demand a more competent and satisfactory 
reply than has yet been given. An opposing consider- 
ation of no slight weight is the different physical type 
(“Mongolian”) of these races, which connects them 
rather with the extreme eastern Asiatics than with the 
Europeans. Another is their possession of a “ classifi- 
catory” system of estimation and designation of rela- 
tionship (Mr. L. H. Morgan), as opposed to the analytic 
or “ descriptive” one of the other branches. It is not, 
then, undue skepticism that leads us to limit the Scyth- 
ian family for the present to its three demonstrated 
branches. Just in this direction there has been such an 
excess of unscientific and wholesale grouping, the clas- 
sification of ignorance, that a little even of overstrained 
conservatism ought to have a wholesome effect. 

The Mongol territory occupies a great space on the 
inhospitable plateau of central Asia; and, as a conse- 
quence of the great movement by which, in the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries, the race became the conquer- 
ors and devastators of almost the whole world, frag- 
ments of it are scattered far westward, one even occu- 
pying a considerable tract astride the Volga, near its 
mouth. The Mongols reach eastward along a great part 
of the northern frontier of China, and are there succeeded 
by the Tungusic tribes, who range still farther east and 
north, almost to the coasts. Of these tribes, the only 
one of note is the Manchu, whose great deed and title 


’ 
ee 


CHINESE LANGUAGE. 237 


to historic fame is its conquest and administration of 
China during the past two centuries. Both Mongols 
and Manchus have alphabets, their usual ones derived 
through the Uigur Turkish from the Syriac; their lit- 
eratures are quite modern only, and reflections of Chi- 
nese originals. 

If in Mongol and Manchu we are close upon the 
absence of all inflective structure, in the Chinese we 
actually reach that condition. The Chinese is a tongue } 
composed of about five hundred separate words, as we/ 
should reckon them, each a monosyllable. But in this) 
language tone is pressed into the service of ordinary in- 
tellectual distinction, and the words are multiplied to 
over fifteen hundred by the significant variety of into- }) 
nation. Nor are these words, like English monosyl- 
lables, worn-out relics of a formerly inflected condition 
of speech ; there is no good reason to doubt their being 
the actual undeveloped roots of the language, analogous 
with the Indo-European roots except in the results of 
use by an enlightened community for communication 
and thought during thousands of years. They have 
been crowded with meanings of every kind, and of 
various degrees of formality ; they have been combined 
into standing phrases, with balance of parts and unity 
of emphasis, as in our JL shall have gone, by the way, 
and so on; many of them have become auxiliaries, 
signs of relation, indicators of special uses analogous 


with those of our parts of speech; but yet they have 


never been made into actual parts of speech, nor united 
into inflectional systems. If they had gone through 
any such process as this, the present speech would show 
plainly the results of it: there would be a much greater 
number and variety of words; they would fall into re- 
lated groups; and they would be more sharply defined 


Qt eT” ie 


238 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


and discriminated in their uses. The Chinese word 
admits of employment indifferently as one and another 
part of speech, and plainly by an inherent non-distinc- 
tion of their various offices. 

The Chinese language is therefore, in one most im- 
portant and fundamental respect, of the very lowest 
gerade of structure and poverty of resource. But it is 
also the most remarkable example in the world of a 
weak instrumentality which is made the means of ac 
complishing great things; it illustrates, in a manner 
which the student of language cannot too carefully 
heed, the truth that language is only an instrumentality, 
and the mind the force that uses it; that the mind, 
which in all its employment of speech implies a great 
deal more than it expresses, is able to do a high quality 
of work with only the scantiest hints of expression, 
catching from the connection and from position the 
shades of meaning and the modes of relation which it 
needs. It is but a difference of degree between Chi- 
nese inexpressiveness and the frequent overloading of 
distinctions which in our view characterizes some of the 
agelutinative idioms: for example, the American In- 
dian; and, with a right view of language, one is as 
explainable as the other. A few scratches on a board 
with a bit of charcoal by a skilled artist may be more 
full of meaning, may speak more strongly to the im- 
agination and feeling, than a picture elaborated by an 


inferior hand with all the resources of a modern art- - 


school. | 

The abundant and varied literature of China goes 
back in its beginnings to nearly 2000 z. c., an antiquity 
exceeded in only two or three other countries of the 
world. Though a tongue of so bald structure is com- 
paratively little liable to disguising alteration, the Chi- 


MONOSYLLABIC FAMILY. 239 


nese of to-day is quite unlike what it was so long ago— 
to what extent and how, learned men are now making 
effort to determine. A still more obvious measure of 
the progress of alteration is given by the dialectic vari- 
eties of the existing language, which are so great that 
almost every hundred miles along the southern coast 
brings one to a new speech, nearly or quite unintelli- 
gible to dwellers in other districts. The literary dialect 
is one in its written character, but somewhat discordant 
in its spoken form, through the whole empire. Some 
hold that here and there, in the dialects, the line which 
separates utter uninflectedness from a rude agelutination 
has been overstepped. ; 

The various languages of Farther India—as the An- 
namese or Cochin-Chinese, the Siamese, and the Bur- 
mese, with the tongues of numerous other wilder and 
less important tribes or races—are sufficiently unlike to 
Chinese and to each other in material to pass for wholly 
unrelated. But they are all alike in the capital point 
that they are uninflected ; and this cannot but be re- 
garded as a strong indication of ultimate relationship 
between them. We can point out, indeed, no reason 
why one race more than another should exhibit an in- 
capacity for linguistic development ; and if we met 
with monosyllabic tongues in different parts of the 
earth, we should have no right to infer their connec- 
tion ; but that the dialects of one corner of Asia should 
share a peculiarity so exceptional can hardly be other 
than the result of a common fixation of the monosyl- 
labic type. At any rate provisionally, therefore, we class 
all these together as the southeastern Asiatic, or mono- 
syllabic family. The Farther Indian tongues are in- 
ferior to the Chinese in just. that manner and degree 
which was to be expected in dialects of inferior races 


240 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


and lower culture. They abound in such means of 
definition as auxiliaries and indicative particles. 

How far the limits of the family thus constructed 
extend, is a question which only further research can 
determine. Running up the southern border of the 
Asiatic plateau, from northern Farther India westward, 
is a region occupied by a great and far from homoge- 
neous mass of dialects, generally called Himalayan, of a 
low type of structure, which are at any rate not sufh- 
ciently known to be classified as distinct from the fam- 
ily we have been considering. With them goes the 
Tibetan, though this has an alphabet, of Indian origin, 
and a Buddhist literature, from the seventh century 
down. | 

Among all these peoples, the position of the Chinese 
is a striking and exceptional one, as that of the only 
race possessing a wholly independent and. highly-devel- 
oped civilization, with attendant literature. _ It is some- 
what like the position of the Accadians—if they be 
proved Scythian—among the other Scythian peoples. 
China has been as grand a centre of light to all its 
neighbors as Mesopotamia; but with this marked differ- 
ence: by a persistency which is one of the most strik- 
ing facts in the history of the world, it has maintained 
‘ts own institutions, political and religious and linguis- 
tic, substantially unchanged from the very dawn of the 
historic period. 

The nation which has profited most by Chinese 
teaching, which has alone shown the capacity to assimi- 
late and continue the Chinese culture, with adaptations 
to its own peculiar character, is the Japanese. It is of 
the same pronounced physical type which we are accus- 
tomed to call Mongolian. Attempts have been made 
to connect its language with those of the Mongols and 


Se 


ee 


JAPANESE LANGUAGE. 241 


Manchus, but they have not met with approved suc- 
cess, and the Japanese still stands alone. It is by no 
means monosyllabic, but rather an agglutinative dialect 
of extremely simple structure, with hardly an estab- 
lished distinction between noun and verb, and with no 
determinate flexion ; the relations of case and number 
and person are indicated by analytic means, by separate 
particles or auxiliary words; number in part by dupli- 
cation. Variations of the radical verbal idea akin with 
those exemplified above from the Turkish are also 
made, by various compounded elements. Combination 
of separate root-words, often with considerable contrac- 
tion or mutilation, is very common ; but it does not tend, 
as with us, to the production of formative elements and 
of forms, except coarsely and restrictedly. Relatives 
and subordinating conjunctions are wanting. The © 
language is burdened with the over-elaborate recogni- 
tion of degrees of dignity in the speaker and the per- 
sons addressed or spoken of, almost to the disuse of 
simple pronouns. The Chinese vocabulary is imported 
en masse into the more learned styles, especially of 
writing. The phonetic structure of the language is 
very simple and euphonious. The oldest literary re- 
mains are from the seventh and eighth centuries. 

The shores and peninsulas and islands of the north- 
eastern corner of Asia are occupied by a variety of races 
and languages, which are too little known, and of too 
little interest, to demand attention from us in this hasty 
review. | 
On the islands, however, which lie off the south- 
eastern part of the continent, and through most of the 
groups and isolated islets that dot the Pacific, north to 
Formosa, east to Easter island, south to New Zealand, 
and west even to Madagascar, on the very border of 


242 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE, 


Africa, are found the scattered members of a vast and 
perfectly well-developed family, the Malay-Polynesian. 
From what central point the migrations of the tribes 
and their dialects took place, it is not possible to tell: 
the family is strictly an insular one, the hold which a 
part of the Malays have on the mainland in Malacca 
being only recently gained (since the twelfth century). 
The Malays proper have adopted Mohammedanism, and’ 
taken for use the Arabic alphabet; and they have a 
tolerably abundant literature, reaching up into the 
fourteenth century. Some of the other less conspicu- 
ous tribes—as the Battaks, Mancassars, and Bugis, and 
the Tagalas of the Philippines—have alphabets, which 
are believed to come ultimately from India, but nothing 
that can fairly be called a literature. But in Java and 
its dependencies, especially Bali, the introduction of 
culture and writing from India dates back even to the 
first century of our era, with a considerable literature, 
founded on the Sanskrit. Elsewhere in the family, 
record begins only with the labors of Christian mis- 
sionaries in the most recent period. 

The family is divided (Friedrich Miller) into three 
great branches: 1. The Malayan, filling on the one 
hand the great islands nearest to Asia, and on the other 
hand the Philippine and Ladrone groups; 2. The 
Polynesian, in most of the smaller groups, with New 
Zealand and Madagascar; 8. The Melanesian, of the 
Fijian and other archipelagos off the northeastern cor- 
ner of Australia. The various Polynesian dialects are 
clearly and closely related; the Melanesian show the 
extreme of dialectic division, with other peculiarities— 
which, along with the darker hue and other physical 
differences of their speakers, have been plausibly ex- 
plained as due to an imposition of Polynesian speech 


MALAY-POLYNESIAN FAMILY. 243 


~ 


upon a population chiefly Papuan. The Malayan di- 
alects are farthest developed, making most approach 
toward something like a rude flexion. For, in general, 
the languages of the family are almost as bare of de- 
rivative and inflectional combinations as is the Chinese 
itself ; their grammatical relations are indicated by pro- 
nouns and particles, which only in the Malayan group, 
and in derivation rather than inflection, take on the 
aspect of affixes: gender, case, number, mood, tense, 
person, are wanting; nor is there any distinction of 
noun from verb; the verb is a substantive or adjective 
used predicatively without copula. The roots, if we 
may call them so, the most ultimate elements accessible 
to our analysis, are prevailingly dissyllabic; and their 
reduplication, either complete or by abbreviation, is a 
means of variation of which great use is made, and for 
very various purposes. Only the pronouns have dis- 
tinct numeral forms, and the first person has the double 
plural, inclusive or exclusive of the person addressed, 
referred to above (pp. 218, 219). The determinative 
particles are more often prefixed than suffixed. 

The Malay-Polynesian languages are more simple in 
regard to their phonetic structure than any others in 
the world. Hardly any of them have more than ten 
consonants ; many only seven. And they do not allow 
a syllable to begin with more than one consonant, or to ~ 
close with a consonant. 

Not the whole population of the Pacific islands 
belongs to this family. The mass of the great islands 
Borneo and New Guinea, with the more inaccessible 
parts of the Philippines and others, are inhabited by a 
black and woolly-haired race, the Papuans or Negritos, 
resembling the Africans though not related with them, 
and quite distinct from the Malay-Polynesians, by whose 


244 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


incursions they have been exterminated or crowded 
back from parts of their ancient possessions. Their 
languages are almost utterly unknown. 

Australia, again, and the neighboring Tasmania, 
were inhabited, when discovered, by a third island-race, 
of dark color but straight-haired, and of nearly or quite 
the lowest known grade of endowment. Their greatly 
varying dialects are polysyllabic and agglutinative, of 
simple phonetic character, and especially different from 
the Polynesian in using exclusively suffixed instead of 
prefixed particles. | 

In reviewing the Indian branch of the Indo-Euro-. 
pean family, we saw that the tribes of our kindred had 
worked their way in through the passes of the north- 
west, driving out or subjecting a more aboriginal pop- 
ulation. This primitive race still holds in possession — 
most of the great southern peninsula, beyond the chain 
of mountains and wild highlands which cuts it off from 
the wide valleys of Hindustan proper. The so-called 
“ Dravidians”? number thirty to forty millions: their 
principal languages are the Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, 
and Malayalam or Malabar ; there are several others, of _ 
inferior importance; and the Brahui, of Beluchistan, 
outside the Indian'border, is believed to belong to the 
group. The Dravidian tongues have some peculiar 
phonetic elements, are richly polysyllabic, of general 
agelutinative structure, with prefixes only, and very 
soft and harmonious in their utterance; they are of a 
very high type of agglutination, like the Finnish and 
Hungarian ; and the author has been informed by an 
American who was born in southern India and grew 
up to speak its language vernacularly along with his 
English, a man of high education and unusual gifts .as 
a preacher and writer, that he esteemed the Tamil a 


CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES. 245 


finer language to think and speak in than any European 
tongue known to him. 

Excepting that they show no trace of the harmonic 
sequence of vowels, these languages are not in their 
structure so different from the Scythian that they might 
not belong to one family with them, if only sufficient 
correspondences of material were found between the 
two groups. And some have been ready, though on 
grounds not to be accepted as sufficient, to declare them 
related. The comparative grammar of the Scythian 
languages has not yet been so reduced to form that it 
should be possible to define the boundaries of the fami- 
ly, either on the west or in the south. 

Among the less familiar languages of Asia we have 
occasion to notice further only that intricate and prob- 
lematical group known’as the Caucasian. As the name 
denotes, its locality is the region between the Caspian 
and Black Seas, filled by the Caucasus range and its 
dependent hills and valleys. The chief dialects on the 
south of the main crest are the Georgian, Suanian, Min- 
erelian, and Lazian, all plainly related to one another, 
and the first having an alphabet, derived along with its 
religion from Armenia, and a literature of some an- 
tiquity. The principal groups on the north are the 
Cireassian, Mitsjeghian, and Lesghian, the first border- _ 
ing the Black Sea, the last the Caspian. The variety of 
sub-dialects, especially of the Lesghian, is very great. 
There is no demonstrated affinity between the southern 
and northern divisions, nor between the members of the 
northern ; how many independent groups there may be 
is yet undetermined ; and also, whether there is any 
tie of analogical structure to bind them together into a 
family, or whether they are the relics of ultimately 
separate families, left stranded, as it were, on the 


246 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


mountains, and defended by them and by the great seas 
in front and behind from the movements of migration 
which have swept the families elsewhere out of ex- 
istence. 

Last among the Asiatic languages, we come to the 
Semitic, so called because in the genealogies of the 
Genesis the communities which speak them are mostly 
described as descendants of Shem. They fill the im- 
mense, but barren and thinly-populated peninsula of 
Arabia, with its northern border-lands, of Mesopotamia 
and Syria and Palestine, and with a district in Abys- 
sinia, lying opposite its southwestern corner. The vari- 
ous dialects of the Arabic, with its African outlier, 
constitute one branch of the family; the Canaanitic 
dialects, chief among which are Hebrew and Pheenician, 
with the Syrian or Aramaic, a second; and the Assyrian 
and Babylonian a third. This is their ancient territory : 
the Phcenician was carried to its colonies, and, as Car- 
thaginian, might perhaps have become the tongue of 
Mediterranean civilization, but that the long struggle 
for supremacy ended with the complete overthrow of 
Carthage by Rome; the Hebrew, replaced in vernacu- 
lar use, even in its own home, four centuries before 
Christ, by the Syrian (Chaldee, Aramaic), has led ever 
since the artificial life of a learned language, scattered 
among the civilized nations; the Arabic, as the sacred 
dialect of a conquering people and religion, has been 
carried, since the seventh century, over a part of the 
world comparable with that which the Latin came final- 
ly to occupy: it is the speech of the whole northern 
border of Africa; it has crowded out the other Semitic 
branches, and has filled with its words the Persian, 
Turkish, and Hindustani, and to a less extent the Malay 
and Spanish vocabularies. It has given birth, however, 


SEMITIC FAMILY. RAY 


to no such group of independent derived languages as 
the Latin can show. 

The ancient Hebrew literature is familiar to us far 
beyond the rest, being our “ Bible ;” its earliest parts 
go back into the second thousand years before Christ. 
The Pheenician has left no literature, and the inscribed 
coffin of a king of Sidon (probably 500 x. c.) is its chief 
monument ; a very recently discovered Moabite tablet 
(of 900 B. c.) gives us a specimen of another ancient 
Canaanitic dialect, almost identical with Hebrew. The 
Aramaic has an abundant Greco-Christian literature, 
beginning from the second century, besides its share in 
the Talmudic writings. The Assyrian has a fragmen- 
tary literature in the inscriptions and tablets of Nineveh 
and Babylon, from a period beyond that of the earliest 
Hebrew. The Arabic begins its record mainly with 
the rise of Islam; since that time it is one of the rich- 
est literatures in the world. In southwest Arabia pre- 
vailed a very different body of dialects, usually styled 
Himyaritic, now preserved only in the jealously-guard- 
ed remains of an earlier civilization. With the Him- 
yaritic is most nearly akin the Abyssinian group, which, 
in two principal literary dialects, the earlier Geéz or 
Ethiopic and the later Amharic, has a considerable lit- 
erature, beginning in the fourth century. 

The Semitic family of languages and races is, after 
the Indo-European, by far the most prominent in the 
history of the world. None but the Semites have, since 
the dawn of the historic period, seriously disputed with 
our family the headship of the human race; and, of the 
three great conquering religions, two, Christianity and 
Mohammedanism, are of Semitic birth—although the 
former won its world-wide dominion in connection with 
its transfer to the hands of Indo-E uropeans, the Greeks 


248 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


and Romans. That we have put off, then, our exami- 
nation of Semitic language to this point is mainly ow- 
ing to its exceptional and anomalous character. Semitic 
speech stands more alone in the world than any other, 
than even the nakedly isolating Chinese or the indefi- 
nitely synthetic American. For, as regards all other 
tongues, the basis of radical elements and the principle 
of their combination being given, it is easy enough in 
theory to explain their various structures, as products 
of one general method of development. But no such 
thing is at present practicable for the Semitic; this 
contains two characteristics—the triliterality of the roots 
and their inflection by internal change, by variation of 
vowel—which belong to it alone. 

What we call the Semitic root, namely, is (except in 
the pronouns and a wholly insignificant number of 
other cases) a conglomerate of three consonants, no 
more and no less: thus, for example, g-#J represents 
the conception of ‘ killing,’ ht) that of ‘writing’ By 
this is not meant, of course, that such conglomerates 
were, like the Indo-European roots, the historical germs 
of a body of derivative forms; but, as we arrive at the 
yoot in Indo-European by taking off the variously ac- 
creted formative elements, we arrive at such a Semitic 
root by removing its formative elements. The latter 
includes no vowel that has an identity to preserve ; the 
addition of any vowel makes a form. Thus, in Arabic 
(the best preserved and most transparent in structure of 
the various dialects), gatala is a verbal third singular, 
‘he killed ;’ as it were, the base of a system of per- 
sonal forms, made, like ours, by pronominal endings: 
thus, gataltu, * 1 killed, gatalat, ‘ she killed, gataltuma, 
‘ye two killed, gatalnd, ‘we killed.’ A change of vow- 
els, to qutila, makes of it a passive, ‘he was killed ; ’ 


SEMITIC FAMILY. 249 


and from this we have by a like process gutéltu, gutilat, 
qututumd, qutind, ete. Another change, to agtala, 
signifies ‘he caused to kill, with its passive wgtila ; and 
soon. Then (w)gtul is imperative, ‘kill!’ and some- 
thing like this is base of another set of persons, formed 
partly by prefixes, partly by suffixes: as yagtulu, ‘he 
kills, tag¢ulu, ‘she kills,’ yagtuliéna, ‘they (men) kill, 
nagtulu, ‘we kill, ete. Then, gad is present participle, 
‘killing,’ and gad) infinitive, ‘act of killing;’ while 
agtdl is ‘causing to kill’ as noun, and mugtil the same 
as adjective. And gitl, ‘enemy, and qu, ‘murder- 
ous,’ are specimens of derivative noun and adjective. 
These forms at once suggest our sing, sang, etc., already 
often used as illustrations ; yet there is an immense dif- 
ference between the two cases: the Semitic phenomena 
ave infinitely more intricate and various; and then they 
are the very life and soul of the inflection of the lan- 
guage, not in a single item reducible to anything more 
original, out of which they should be seen to grow, by 
an “inorganic” process. If we could conceive that, at 
some peculiarly plastic period in the history of a Ger- 
manic dialect, by an abnormal extension of the analogy 
of sing, sang, etc., the popular taste taking a sudden 
bent toward such formations, all the rest of the Jan- 
guage should come to be patterned after that model, 
with consequent complete oblivion of the state of things 
out of which sing, sang, etc. proceeded—that would be 
something analogous with the present condition of Se- 
mitie. 

The other peculiarities of the language are trifling 
as compared with these, not different in kind or degree 
from such as are variously found in other tongues. The 
structure of the verb is quite unlike ours. The element 
of time does not enter distinctly into it; the (only) two 


a 


250 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


so-called tenses are explained as indicating primarily 
complete and incomplete action, and each fills various 
offices of tense. In Assyrian, the tense of complete 
action has gone almost entirely out of use. Of forms 
analogous with our moods, too, there is great poverty. 
But, as we have found the case in more than one other 
family, there isa disposition to the formation of numer- 


' ous conjugations from one root, representing the radical 


| 


idea in a causative, a reflexive, an intensive, a conative 
form, and so on. In Arabic, where these changes are 
fullest, there are some fifteen such conjugations ; and 
about a dozen of them, each with its passive, are in tol- 


erably frequent use. The tense of incomplete action 
/ (yaqtulu, ete.) has the aspect of being younger than 


the other, and of standing at only one remove from a 
noun ; since its endings of number are mainly coinci- 
dent with those of ordinary noun inflection, and it de- 
notes person by prefixes, while the other (gatala, etc.) 
indicates person and number together by added end- 
ings, evidently of pronominal origin. Both tenses dis- 
tinguish masculine from feminine subject, except in the 
first person. We find the distinction of gender (mas- 
culine and feminine only) here again for the first time 
since we left the Indo-European family. The nouns 
have the same three numbers as the verb, but of case 
distinction there is almost nothing. Derived nouns are 
formed by the help both of internal flexion and of ex- 
ternal additions, both prefixes and suffixes; but only 
directly from the root: those successive derivations, by 
ending added to ending, in which the Indo-European 
abounds (as true, tru-th, truth-ful, un-truthful-ly) are 
quite unknown. Nor are compounds formed, save in 
exceptional cases. J*inally, connecting particles, as 
means of the intertwining and subordination of clauses, 


SEMITIC FAMILY. 251 


their conversion into a period, are almost wanting: 
Semitic style is bald and simple, proceeding from asser-| 
tion to assertion. Another marked peculiarity is the ~ 


persistency of radical meaning in derivative and figura- 
tive expression : the metaphorical or other transfer by 
which a new term is won, instead of soon passing out 


of memory, as in Indo-European, lets the old meaning | 


continue to show through. Picturesqueness, pictorial 


vividness, therefore, are leading characteristics of Se- We 


mitic language. 

The scale of dialectic differences is much less in 
Semitic than in Indo-European; all the great branches, 
even, are as it were the closely related members of a 
single branch. This is not necessarily because their 
separation has been more recent than that of the 
branches of our family; for Semitic speech has shown 
itself much more rigid and changeless than Indo-Euro- 
pean—or, it is believed, than any other variety of hu- 
man speech. The ground of this difference doubtless 
lies partly in the character of the speakers; but it is 
also in part to be plainly read in the character of the 
language itself, with its rigid framework of three con- 


sonants appearing in the whole body of derivatives of , 


each root, with its significant and therefore more eare- 
fully maintained variations of vowel, and with its in- 
capacity of new formations by composition. Its primi- 
tive development, if development it was, was into so 
individual and sharply defined a type that it has since 
been comparatively exempt from variation. 

There are two ways of looking at the peculiarities 
of Semitic structure. One, by far the simpler and 
more comfortable, is to pronounce them original and 
inexplicable, an indefeasible part of the appanage of 
the Semitic mind, to be taken ‘as presented, and no 


ese 


959 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


questions asked. This, however, is virtually to declare 


them outside the pale of science, to abnegate with re- 


gard to them the right of the linguistic student to ask 
after the why of what he finds anywhere in language. 
The other way is to put this question and pursue it, not 
daunted by the acknowledged difficulties of the case. 
If all other languages have had a history of develop- 
ment into their present shape, then doubtless the Se- 
mitic also; if all the rest have started from pronounce- 
able roots, composed of a combination of consonant and 
vowel, and have grown by external accretion of other 
similar elements to these, then it is not lightly to be 
believed that the Semitic has not done the same. That 
is to say, there must probably lie behind the consonantal 
triple roots and the internal flexion of the Semitic 
something more analogous with what is seen to lie at 
the basis of all other human speech; and there must 
have been a history of change from the one of these 
conditions to the other—whether we shall or shall not 
prove able to retrace the history and restore the primi- 
tive condition. Most linguistic scholars, as might be 
expected, take the latter view; and the attempt has 
been repeatedly made to reduce the roots to a more 
primitive form; but no definite and solid results have 
been yet attained. The most plausible conjectural ac- 
count of the matter, probably, yet suggested has been 
that the universality of the three root-consonants is due 
(as in our hypothetical case above) to the morganic ex- 
tension of an analogy which had in some way become a 
dominant one; and that a stage of dissyllabic or trisyl- 
Jabic derivative nouns lies between the primitive roots 
and their present shape. But to offer a plausible con- 
jecture is one thing, and to demonstrate its value as a 
true explanation is another; and until something like 


RELATION OF SEMITIC TO OTHER FAMILIES. 953 


a demonstration is reached (which possibly may never 
be), there will doubtless continue to be those who 
will look upon Semitic triliterality and internal flexion 
as original, as not only inaccessible to explanation but 
calling for none. , 

It must, however, be admitted that with the retrac- 
ing of Semitic root-history is indissolubly bound up the 
historical connection of Semitic language with any other 
form of human speech. So long as Semitic flexion re- 
mains what it is, it cannot be identified with that of 
any other language; so long as Semitic roots remain 
what they are, no resemblances which may be traced 
between them and those of any other language can have 
real value. It has been a favorite subject of effort with 
scholars, ever since the beginning of linguistic study, to 
connect the germs of Semitic and Indo-European. speech, 
and to prove the two families and the races that speak 
them branches of an ultimately common stock. There 
are many things which tempt to this: the two peoples 
are, at the beginning of their cultural history, near 
neighbors and mutual helpers; they are the two great 
conquering and civilizing white races, exchanging in- 
fluence and institutions with one another through the 
ages: how natural to connect them more closely with 
one another than with mankind in general! This con- 
sideration goes all the way back to the representation 
of Shem and Japhet as sons of one father. But here, 
again, plausible theory is one thing, and scientific dem- 
onstration another. If the items of apparent agree- 
ment which great scholars have hunted up between 
Semitic and Indo-European had been pointed out as 
existing between Indo-European and Zulu or Papuan, 
no one would think them of any account; and they are 
really worth no more where they are, as scientific evi- 


2o4 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE, 


dence. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that, until 
the anomalies of Semitic language’ are at least measu- 
rably explained, it is too soon to say anything about a 
relationship between it and any other tongue. 

The same rule is to be applied to the current asser- 
tions of Semitic relationship in the opposite direction, 
with the tongues which are grouped together to form 
the “‘ Hamitic” family. In this family, the Egyptian 
occupies the same commanding. position as the Chinese 
“among the monosyllabic tongues of southeastern Asia. 
Egypt is the home of by far the oldest civilization of 
which we have any records. The question as to the 
chronology of its earliest monuments is not, to be sure, 
settled beyond dispute; but the present tendency of 
scientific inquiry seems decidedly toward recognizing as 
well founded even the extreme claims put forth respect- 
ing them, and fixing the reign of the first historical 
king at nearly 4000 B. o.; and even at that time the 
race must have been a powerful. one, with a highly de- 
veloped civilization. The knowledge of Egyptian lan- 
guage has been recovered in our own century, after 
being utterly lost for near-two thousand years, and re- 
markable discoveries of new material in the country 
itself, and advances in Egyptian learning in Europe, 
are at this very time going on; so that many of the 
historical and chronological questions about which we 
are disputing will be fully settled for the generation 
that succeeds us. 

The key to the decipherment of the ancient Egyp- 
tian was furnished in its descendant, the modern Cop- 
tic. The Coptic records are Christian only, written in 
an alphabet derived from the Greek, and dating back 
to the early centuries of our era. But the language 
was extinguished in vernacular use by the Arabic, three 


EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE. 2d9 


or four centuries ago. Several slightly different dia- 
lects are to be recognized in its literary remains. 

The Egyptian language, old and new, was of the 
utmost. simplicity of structure. It hardly knew a dis- 
tinction between root and word; its fundamental ele- 
ments (not always monosyllabic) were brought directly 
into the combinations of the sentence, without formal 
means of distinction of one part of speech from an- 
other. Nor even in inflection is such distinction clearly 
made; noun and verb are separated in part by the con- 
nection only: ran, for example, is literally ‘ naming- 
mine,’ and means either ‘my name’ or ‘J name or call.’ 
The personal inflection of the verb is by means of af- 
fixed pronouns, loosely agglutinated to it, that of the 
third person being omissible when a subject noun is 
expressed. Mood and tense are marked, within narrow 
limits, by prefixed auxiliary words. The noun has no 
declension : relations of case are denoted by connec- 
tives ; its use as noun is generally marked by a prefixed 
“ article.’ And in this article, as in the pronominal 
elements generally, is made in the singular a distinction 
of masculine and feminine gender—a marked peculiar- 
ity of the language, putting it so far into one class with 
the Semitic and Indo-European. This particular, how- 
ever, is one of which the reach and importance are wont 
to be greatly exaggerated ; in its general character, the 
language can sustain no comparison at all with the other 
two mentioned ; it is little richer or more developed 
than the lowest tongues of the eastern Asiatic races. 

It must be clearly apparent from this description 
how venturesome is the assertion of a relationship be- 
tween the Egyptian and Semitic. There are, to be sure, 
certain remarkable resemblances between the pronouns 
of the two languages; but to rely on these as sufficient 

12 


aan 


cna ia a 


256 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


proof of connection is not an acceptable proceeding. 
In many languages, signs of relationship, abundantly 
traceable through their whole material, are especially 
conspicuous in the pronouns; of connection proved by 
pronominal evidence solely, or chiefly, there are no ex- 
amples. And the question is, whether pronominal 
words could possibly retain an almost undisguised iden- 
tity while the rest of the language was undergoing such 
a tremendous revolution as should alone be able to con- 
vert Egyptian poverty of inflection and fixity of root 
and freedom of radical form into the strictly regulated 
wealth and internal flexion of the Semitic. And the 
provisional answer must be in the negative. We do 
not need to deny the possibility of ultimately proving 
the Semitic related with the Hamitic, any more than 
with the Indo-European ; we have only to see that no 
sufficient evidence of it has yet been brought forward, 
nor is likely to be so until the riddle of Semitic struct- 
ure is solved. ) 

It is held by students of African language that a 
considerable body of other tongues show signs of ulti- 
mate connection with the Egyptian, forming with it the 
Hamitic family., There is the Libyan or Berber of 
northern Africa, and a considerable group south of 
Egypt, having the Galla as its most prominent member, 
and known as the Ethiopian. 

Nearly the whole of the narrower southern penin- 
sula of Africa is oceupied by the branches of a single 
very distinct family, best called the South-African 
(known also as Bantu, Chuana, Zingian). It has no 
culture and no literature, except what it has produced 
by the aid of Christian missionaries in the most recent 
time. It is strikingly characterized by its extensive use 
of prefixes: a word without a formative prefix being 


SOUTH-AFRICAN FAMILY. 257 


here nearly as unknown as, in the synthetic period of 
Indo-European, a word without a formative suffix. 
Different prefixes distinguish various classes of nouns, 
and numbers in those classes: thus, in Zulu, um-fana 
is ‘boy,’ and aba-fana ‘boys;’ in-komo is‘ cow,’ and 
izin-komo ‘cows ;? ti-ewe is ‘country, and ama-2we 
‘countries,’ and so on. Then, in the clauses into which 
any one of these words enters as dominant member, 
other members relating to them—as adjectives, posses- 
sives, verbs—take into their structure representative 
parts of the same prefix: e. g. aba-fana b-ami aba-kulu, 
ba tanda, ‘my large boys, they love;’ but <zin-komo 
zamt rzin-kulu, zi tanda, ‘my large cows, they love.’ 
This is like Latin or Greek inverted ; an alliterative 
instead of a rhyming congruence. Verbal mood and 
tense are signified in part by suffixes, as are also con- 
jugational distinctions analogous with those made in 
Scythian and Semitic language: thus, from bona, see,’ 
come bonisa, ‘show,’ bonana, ‘see each other,’ bonisana, 
‘show each other,’ and so on. Case-relations are sig- 
nified by prefixed prepositions. The South-African 
languages are thus by no means unprovided with the 
formal means of sufficiently various distinction. Those 
of them which border on the Hottentot dialects have in 
their alphabets peculiar sounds called “ clicks,” made 
by sharp separation of the tongue from the roof of the 
mouth, with suction. 

The clicks are*a marked feature of the Hottentot, 
and look as if they had been introduced into the South- 
African from thence, perhaps along with mixture of 
blood. There is no relationship whatever between the 
two families ; nor, probably, between the Hottentot and 
the Bushman. Of the last mentioned, the scientific in- 
vestigation is now just beginning (Bleek) ; the other, 


258 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


chiefly on the ground of its partial distinction of gen- 
ders, has been by some accounted a branch of the 
Hamitic family, strayed away into the far south and 
ereatly degraded in type; but the connection is con- 
fidently denied by others. .: 

Between the South-African and Hamitic domains, 
in a broad band extending across the widest part of the 
African continent, is found an intricate and heterogene- 
ous mass of dialects, of which the classification is a 
matter of much difference of opinion among even the 
latest investigators, and which are of too little impor- 
tance to be dwelt on by us. The region is that of the 
typical negro; yet there are also in it races of a lighter 
tint: the variety of physical characteristics in Africa, 
among races which we in our ignorance lump together 
as one, 1s very great. 

Before leaving the eastern continent, we must re- 
turn to Europe for a word or two upon one language 
which has as yet found no place for notice—the Basque, 
now spoken, in four principal dialects and a number of 
minor varieties, in a very limited mountain-district at 
the angle of the Bay of Biscay, astride the frontier, but 
chiefly on the Spanish side. It 1s believed to be the 
modern representative of the ancient Iberian, and to 
have belonged to the older population of the penin- 
sula, before the irruption of the Indo-European Celts. 
Traces of local nomenclature show it to have occupied 
also at least the southern part of France. The Basque 
may then be the sole surviving relic and witness of an 
aboriginal western European population, dispossessed 
by the intrusive Indo-European tribes. It stands en- 
tirely alone, no kindred having yet been found for it in 
any part of the world. It is of an exaggeratedly ag- 
glutinative type, incorporating into its verb a variety of 


AMERICAN FAMILY, 259 


relations which are almost everywhere else expressed by 
independent words. 

The Basque forms a suitable stepping-stone from 
which to enter the peculiar linguistic domain of the 
New World, since there is no other dialect of the Old 
World which so much resembles in structure the Ameri- 
can languages. Not that the latter are all of accordant 
form. Although it is usual among philologists to ac- 
count them as making together but a single great fami- 
ly, this is in no small part a classification of ignorance, 
and should be held only provisionally, ready to be 
changed, if necessary, when additional knowledge is 
won. ~As regards the material of expression, it is fully 
confessed that there is irreconcilable diversity among 
them. There are a very considerable number of groups, 
between whose significant signs exist no more appar- 
ent correspondences than between those of English, 
Hungarian, and Malay: none, namely, which may not 
be merely fortuitous. So, for example, between the 
neighboring tongues of the Algonkin, Iroquois, and 
Dakota groups, the speakers of which we have every 
reason to regard as ultimately related, on the ground of 
common physical characteristics, gifts, and institutions. 
Indeed, there is even linguistic evidence to the same 
effect. The case seems to be clearly one where the 
style of structure of a language is more permanent than 
the material, constituting of itself a satisfactory proof 
of relationship. That is to say, while the material ele- 
ments of these tongues have been highly variable since 
their separation from one another, till identities in this 
department are no longer traceable—a feature in their 
history which we shall understand and judge more truly 
when the special laws of their growth and change shall 
be much better comprehended—there still remains, un- 


260 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


altered in its main features, their common mode of 
managing and combining the linguistic material, of 
apprehending the relations which are to be expressed 
in language, and the way in which they shall be ex- 
pressed. 

And this common mode of structure, which, in its 
various aspects and degrees, is at least generally char- 
acteristic of American language, is called the polysyn- 
thetic or incorporating. Its marked tendency is toward 
the absorbing of the other parts of the sentence into 
the verb. Not the subject alone, as in Indo-European, 
enters into combination with the root for predicative 
expression, but the objects also, of every kind of rela- 
tion, and the signs of time and place and manner and 
degree, and a host of modifiers of the verbal action, 
for purposes unknown to any grammatical system with 
which we are ordinarily familiar. It has been deliber- 
ately calculated, by one long versed in the chief Algon- 
kin dialects (Rev. T. Hurlbut), that 17,000,000 verbal 
forms may be made from an Algonkin root; and even 
if our credence were to extend to only the thousandth 
part of this, enough would be left to be very character- 
istic of a structural style. Everything tends to verbal 
expression: nouns, and adjectives, and even adverbs 
and prepositions, are regularly conjugated ; nouns are 
to a great extent verbal forms: e. g. ‘home’ is ‘they 
live there, or ‘where they live” Or, to express it 
more accurately, our grammatical terminology does not 
at all suit these languages; we are involved in contra- 
dictions and absurdities as soon as we attempt to apply 
it to them. Of course, the tendency is toward the 
formation of words of immense length, and of an in- 
tricate structure that gives expression to a host of things 
left by us to be understood. The longest word in Eliot’s 


AMERICAN FAMILY. 261 


Massachusetts Bible, however, is of eleven syllables : 
wut-appesitugussun-nooweht-unk-quoh, which renders 
‘kneeling down to him” in our version; but it really 
means ‘he came to a state of rest upon the bended 
knees, doing reverence unto him’ (J. H. Trumbull). 
All the parts of such combinations must be recognized 
in their separateness; the word must be in all its mem- 
bers significant and self-explaining. And the separate 
elements are not, as is often represented, a reduction to 
manageable fragments of long words for which they 
stand; they are rather the desired significant element 
among those which compose the other word. Of 
course, there are infinite possibilities of expressiveness 
in such a structure; and it would only need that some 
native-American Greek race should arise, to fill it full 
of thought and fancy, and put it to the uses of a noble 
literature, and it would be rightly admired as rich and 
flexible, perhaps, beyond anything else that the world 
knew. As it is, it makes upon us the impression of as 
much exceeding the due medium of formal expressive- 
ness as the Chinese comes short of it; it is cumbrous 
and time-wasting in its immense polysylabism. Partly 
as a result of its multiplicity of accessory details, it 
seems to us deficient in simple abstract terms: as hav- 
ing, for instance, separate roots for washing all kinds of 
objects, in all kinds of ways, but none for ‘ washing’ 
pure and simple. There is something of our prejudice 
in this, however; so a Chinaman or Englishman might 
criticise a Latin adjective unfavorably, saying: “ The 
Latin is deficient in the power of abstraction, of con- 
sidering a quality apart from its accidental accessories : 
so Meilidess for example, does not signify simply ¢a, 
‘great, but a quality of great of a first degree, and as 
belonging to only one object, and to one that is (for — 


262 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


some unassignable reason) regarded as masculine and 
can be only the subject of a verb; magnas indicates in 
like manner an objective and feminine and plural great- 
ness; but for ee bare idea of ta, ‘ great,’ the Latin has 
no expression.” 

“ There are other characteristics of Axhenieae speech, 
of universal or general prevalence, like the distinction 
of animate and inanimate gender (which would seem to 
be quite as significant, and as capable of being applied 
to higher formative uses, as is our own sexual gender), 
the possession of the inclusive and exclusive first per- 
sons plural, the classificatory system of designation of 
relationships, and so on; but they are of only minor 
importance, as compared with the general style of 
structure. 

The polysynthetic structure does not belong in the 
same degree to all the American languages; on the 
contrary, it seems to be altogether effaced or originally 
wanting in some. So, for example, a monosyllabic or 
uninflective character has been claimed for the Otomi 
in Mexico, and for one or two dialects in South Ameri- 
ca; and all sign of polysynthetism has been denied (C. 
i’. Hartt) to the, great Tupi-Guarani stock, on the 
eastern side of the South American continent. It re- 
mains yet to be determined how far such exceptions are 
real, and how far apparent only. But the common 
character is recognizable in so large a part of American 
tongues, from the Eskimo of the extreme north to the 
Antarctic Ocean, that the linguist regards them, with 
considerable confidence, as members of a family, de- 
scendants of one original speech, of unknown age, lo- 
cality, and derivation. Attempts have been made to 
connect them with some dialect or family of the Old 
World, but with obviously unavoidable ill-success. If, 


CCC a 


AMERICAN FAMILY. 263 


for example, there is not left in Algonkin, Iroquois, and 
Dakota enough of the material once common to the 
ancestors of all to furnish ground for trustworthy 
identifications, much less are they to be identified with 
tongues from which they have been so much longer 
separated that even their structure is of a different char- 
acter. It is not proper, perhaps, to limit the possibili- 
ties of the future; but there appears to be no tolerable 
prospect that, even supposing the American languages 
derived from the Old World, they can ever be proved 
so, or traced to their parentage. 

An exhaustive classification of the American lan- 
guages is at present impossible; and to give what can 
already be given would demand much more space than 
can be afforded here. ‘There are many great groups, 
and a host of lesser knots of idioms, or of dialects 
isolated or unclassified. The Eskimos line the whole 
northern coast, and the northeastern down to Newfound- 
land. The inahseiean or Tinné occupies a great re- 
gion in the far northwest (the Apache and Navajo in 
the south also belong to it), and is flanked on the west 
by the Selish and other smaller groups. The Algonkin 
had in possession the northeastern and middle United 
States, and stretched westward to the Rocky Moun- 
tains; within its territory was included that of the 
Iroquois. The Dakota (Sioux) is the largest of the 
families occupying the great prairies and plains of the 
far West. The Muskokee group filled the States of the 
southeast. In Colorado and Utah commence the towns 
of the settled and comparatively civilized “pueblo 
Indians,” rising to the more advanced culture of the 
Mexican peoples, attaining its height in the Mayas of 
Central America, and continued in the empire of the 
Incas of Peru. The Quichua of the latter, with the 


264 FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE. 


related Aymara, are still the native dialects of a consid- 
erable part of South America; with the Tupi-Guarani, 
already referred to, on the east, in the valleys of the 
Amazons and its tributaries. | 

The condition of American languages is thus an 
epitome of that of the language of the world in gen- 
eral. Great and wide-spread families, limited groups, 
isolated and perishing dialects, touch and jostle one 
another. Such, in the vicissitudes of human affairs, 
must be the history of races and of their dialects. 
What families, once covering great tracts of the earth’s 
surface, have been wiped out without a trace, what 
others have been reduced to mere fragments, what have 
started from a narrow beginning, and, by prosperous 
growth and by working in parts of other races, have 
risen to prominence—on such points as these we must 
remain forever only imperfectly informed. We need 
to. guard against supposing that, when we have succeed- 
ed in classifying all existing languages and determining 
their relations, we shall have gained a complete outline 
of the history of human language: the darkness of the 
past may hide a great deal of which we do not even 
catch a glimpse. 

Some of the questions bearing on this point will 
engage our attention in the next chapter. 


CHAP TE Reece L13 
LANGUAGE AND ETHNOLOGY. 


Limitations to the scope of linguistic science: materials of speech not 
_ analyzable to the end; annihilation, transmutation, new creation, 
possible in it; cumulative character of evidences of relationship. 
Impossibility that language can prove either unity or variety of the 
human race. Relation of language to race, as transmitted institu- 
tion only; exchange of language accompanying mixture of blood. 
Insolubility of the ethnological problem. Contributions to it of 
archeology and linguistics ; merits of the latter; importance of the 
testimony of language to race. Reconciliation of the various lines of 
ethnological evidence. Inferior value of other classifications of lan- 
guage as compared with the genetic. 


Tue classification of languages given in the preced- 
ing chapter has confessedly represented only the pres- 
ent state of knowledge, and is liable to amendment here- 
after, as further investigation shall bring more light. 
But its main features will probably stand unaltered. 
The leading independent families will continue separate 
to the end. One and another of those now recognized, 
it is true, may hereafter assume a dependent place, as 
branches of a wider and more comprehensive family, 
but there is no reasonable ground for anticipating that 
such will ever be the case with them all. To maintain 
this is not so much to limit the future of linguistic sci- 
ence, as, rather, to recognize the limits which in the 


266 LANGUAGE AND ETIINOLOGY. 


nature of things are set to its progress; as a brief and 
simple exposition will show. 

We must not fail to appreciate the essential differ- 
ence between the material of the physical sciences and 
that of our subject; that we have to deal with the 
usages of men, in all of which intervenes that indefinite 
element, the human will as determined by circumstance, 
by habit, by individual character; and that these do not 
admit an analysis penetrating to the ultimate elements. 
There is no natural substance which the chemist may 
not aspire to analyze; into whatever new forms and 
combinations an element may enter, he has tests which 
will detect its presence; neither new creation nor an- 
nihilation is possible; all change is but recombination 
of material always existing; there is no transmutation 
of one element into another. But it is altogether dif- 
ferent with speech. A word, a whole family of words, 
perishes by simple disuse, and is as if it had never been, 
unless civilization is there to make a record of its de- 
parted worth. A whole language, or family of Jan- 
guages, is annihilated by the destruction of the commu- 
nity that spoke it, or by the adoption of another lan- 
guage by that community. When the Gauls learned 
Latin, there was nothing saved which, without the aid 
of external evidences, should show what their primitive 
speech had been; when the Etruscans were Latinized, 
but for the scattering words which they had written 
down, their speech passed out of all reach of knowl- 
edge: and many a dialect has-doubtless gone out in a 
like way, leaving no such telltale records. The actual 
creation of the new in speech is, as we have seen, very 
rare; yet there is nothing whatever to prevent it save 
men’s preferences. And it amounts, for all purposes of 
analysis, to a new creation, when a derivative word gets 


ANNIHILATION AND TRANSMUTATION. 267 


so far from its primitive, in form and meaning, that the 
tie between them is traceable only by external, historical 
evidence: and of such cases all language is full. A 
formative element is annihilated when it is worn off 
from every form which it once made; such a one is 
created when it is fully established in its derived and 
subordinate use: no process of analysis that we have or 
of which we can conceive would ever find the lost masa 
of our first persons plural, or detect the presence of did 
in loved: there is wanted the historical support, for 
lack of which a host of other like cases cannot be ac- 
counted for. 

The changes of linguistic usage are all the time sep- 
arating in appearance what really belongs together: 
bishop and évéque are historically one word ; so are eye 
and auge; so are J and ye and zk and éywv and aham ; 
though not one of them has an audible element which 
is found in any other. And then, the same changes 
are bringing together what really belongs apart: the 
Latin locus and the Sanskrit ldokas, ‘ place, room,’ have 
really nothing to do with one another, though so nearly 
identical and in closely-related languages; likewise 
Greek 6Xos (holos) and English whole ; and so on. We 
may take the English language (as too many do), and 
compare it with every unrelated dialect in existence, 
and find a liberal list of apparent correspondences ; 
which then a little study of the English words will 
prove unreal and fallacious. This is, above all others, 
the decisive fact which stands in the way of a com- 
parison that shall penetrate to the bottom of the matter. 
If there were no resemblances in either the material or 
the structure of language save such as have a historical 
basis, we might let them be swept away as much as 
they would; what was left, if anything were left, would 


268 - LANGUAGE AND ETHNOLOGY. 


suffice to prove relationship. As it is, the process of 
proof is not direct and absolute, but cumulative ; the 
result comes from a sufficient number of particulars of 
which each, taken by itself, would prove nothing. We 
have had expressly to allow that two dialects may di- 
verge from a common original so far that all sign of 
their kinship shall be lost; there may be a plenty of 
the altered products of common material in them both ; 
but if it have gotten into the condition of beshop and 
évéque, it is of no use to the linguist. Accidental cor- 
respondences are capable of rising to a certain percent- 
age ; if all that appear stand at or near this figure, the 
case is one hopeless of settlement. 

This cumulative character of the signs of relation- 
ship, the uncertain value of any single item, and the 
need of historical evidence to support their interpreta- 
tion, set limits to the reach and competence of linguistic 
investigation. Thus far, the recognized families are 
such as have had a common development. ‘There are 
even some of which the sole uniting tie is a common 
style of structure. If we cannot prove the American 
languages related except by the characteristic of poly- 
synthetism, nor the southeastern Asiatic except by that 
of monosyllabism, it is obviously impossible to prove 
American and Chinese related by the material corre- 
spondences of their roots. In the present stage of lin- 
guistic science, root-comparisons are surrounded with 
too many uncertainties and dangers to have any value. 
All that have been made thus far are worthless; wheth- 
er the future will show anything better, we may leave 
for the future to determine. There is no harm in any 
one’s rating even too highly the possibilities of a pro- 
gressive science like linguistics, provided he do not let 
his sanguineness warp his judgment as to what shall 


UNITY OR VARIETY OF HUMAN ORIGINS. 269 


have been at any given time already accomplished, and 
lead him to take plausible fancies for tried and ap- 
proved facts. He who realizes the immense difficulty 
of arriving at the ultimate roots even of a family like 
the Indo-European, despite the exceptional antiquity 
and conservation of its oldest dialects, will be likely to 
be saved from hanging his expectations on root-com- 
parisons. | 

It is, then, impossible that linguistic science should 
ever be able to prove, by the evidence of community 
of the first germs of expression, that the human race 
in the beginning formed one society together. Even if 
the number of families be lessened by future research, 
it will never be reduced to one. 

But it is even far more demonstrable that linguistic 
science can never prove the variety of human races and 
origins. As we have repeatedly seen, there are no lim- 
its to the diversity which may arise by discordant 
growth between languages originally one. Given any 
angle of divergence, and the law of increasing diver- 
gence (p. 165), and the distance of the ends of two lines 
may be made, by their production far enough, to exceed 
any assignable quantity; and in linguistics, as has been 
just pointed out, there comes, far short of infinite pro- 
longation, a distance across which the historical scholar, 
with his limited vision, cannot see: and that is, for all 
practical purposes, infinity. The understanding now 
won of the methods of growth and change in speech 
has taken away all possibility of a dogmatic assertion 
on the part of the linguistic scholar that language has 
a various origin. If every tongue had from the begin- 
ning its own structure and material complete, then lan- 
guage-history would run back only in parallel lines, 
with no indication of convergence. But the difference 


27/0) | LANGUAGE AND ETHNOLOGY. 


of English and German and Danish comes by divergent 
growth from a common centre; that of English and 
Russian and Armenian and Persian is by similar diver- 
gence from a more distant centre: and we cannot say 
that English and Turkish and Circassian and Japanese 
may not owe their difference to the same cause. The 
lines of development of all families of language do point 
back to one original common condition of formless 
roots; and prceaele what these roots were, in shape 
and meaning, we cannot in most families even begin to 
trace out; we cannot, then, deny that they may have 
been the same for all. We may talk of probabilities as 
much as we please; but of impossibility there is actually 
nothing in the assumption of identity of origins. 

This, again, implies that linguistic science cannot 
assume to prove the diversity of human races. But it 
deserves to be pointed out that there is an additional 
difficulty in the way of the same proof. If we must 
regard it as at least possible (whether we admit it as an 
established conclusion or not) that men made the begin- 
nings of their own speech, as well as created all its 
after-development, then we shall be obliged also to al- 
low that a period of some length may have elapsed 
before any so settled store of expression had been won 
that it should show itself in the later forms of lan- 
guage; and during this period the race, though one, 
might have spread and separated, so that the abiding 
germs of the speech of each part should be independent. 
As a general conclusion, the incompetence of linguistic 
science to pass any decisive judgment as to the unity 
or diversity of the human race, or even as to that of 
human speech, appears to be completely and irrevoca- 
bly demonstrated. 

Another highly important anthropological question, 


LANGUAGE AND RACE. ait 


connected with and suggested by our classification of 
languages, concerns its relation to the ethnologist’s clas- 
sification of races. And here we have to make at the 
outset the unreserved confession that the two do not by 
any means correspond and agree: wholly discordant 
languages are spoken by communities whom the ethnol- 
ogist would not separate in race from one another; and 
related languages are spoken by men of apparently dif- 
ferent race. And the view we have taken of language 
is entirely consistent with this. We have seen that 
there is no necessary tie between race and language ; 
that every man speaks the language he has learned, be- 
ing born into the possession of no one rather than an- 
other; and that, as any individual may learn a language 
different from that of his parents or of his remoter 
ancestors, so a community (which is only an aggregate 
of individuals) may do the same thing, not retaining 
the slightest trace of its ancestral speech. The world, 
past and present, is full of examples of this, of every 
class and kind, and sundry of them have been already 
noticed by us in passing—as the combination of hetero- 
geneous elements, now using only English as their 
native tongue, found in the American community; the 
Celts of Gaul, the Normans of France, the Celts of Ire- 
land and Cornwall, the Etruscans of Italy, and all the 
other communities whose idioms have been crowded. 
out and replaced by the Latin, the English, the Arabic. 
There are conquering languages which are always en- 
croaching upon. the territory of their neighbors, as there 
are others which are always losing ground. 

The testimony of language to race is thus not that 
of a physical characteristic, nor of anything founded on 
and representing such; but only that of a transmitted 
institution, which, under sufficient inducement, is capa- 


aie LANGUAGE AND ETHNOLOGY. 


ble of being abandoned by its proper inheritors, or as- 
sumed by men of strange blood. And the inducement 
lies in external circumstances, not in the nature of the 
language abandoned or assumed. Political control, 
social superiority, superiority of culture—these are the 
leading causes which bring about change of speech. 
Or rather, these are the added circumstances which, in 
the case of a mixture of communities, decide which 
element of population shall give, chiefly or wholly, its 
tongue to the resulting community. If there were no 
such thing as mixture of blood, then there would at 
least be next to nothing of the shifting of speech. 
Borrowing there would still be, but not substitution. 

It is mixture of communities which creates the 
ereat intricacy of the ethnological problem, on its lin- 
cuistic side as on its physical ; which renders it, in fact, 
insoluble except approximately ; and which,.so far as 
the history of races is concerned, makes the linguist as 
glad of the help of the physicist as vece versd. The 
ethnologist has to confess the same possibility which 
was admitted on the part of the linguists at the end of 
the preceding chapter. During the long past, there 
have been indefinite encroachments, superpositions, 
mixtures, displacements, destructions, among human 
races (or derived branches of a unitary race), as among 
human languages (or derived branches of the unitary 
human language). In neither department is it likely 
that the history will ever be unraveled with anything 
approaching to completeness: especially, since the great 
extension which the generally-admitted period of man’s 
existence on the earth has lately received. Opinions 
are by no means as yet agreed upon this point; but 
even those who still refuse to accept the new doctrine 
are preparing themselves to believe by-and-by, if the 


ARCHAOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS. rar es, 


evidence to that effect shall turn out irresistible, that the 
life of man has lasted for scores, if not for hundreds, 
of thousands of years. This is a doctrine of the highest 
interest to the ethnologist; but it balks his hopes of 
being able to trace more than a little way into the thick 
darkness of early time the lines of race-history ; it gives 
the precedence to anthropology as the science of man’s 
development as a whole race, or a congeries of undis- 
tinguishable races, as yet not sufficiently differentiated 
in their. capacities and products to be held apart from 
one another ; and to zodlogy as alone capable of answer- 
ing the question as to his origin. 

The records of the earliest and rudest period of 
man’s activity are of two kinds: the products of their 
art and industry, wrought by their hands; and the 
primitive materials and forms of their speech, wrought 
for the uses of their minds; the latter the instrument 
of sociality, as the former of individual subsistence and 
defense ; both turning, each in its own way and meas- 
ure, to the education and equipment of the higher 
capacities of the race, and its advance toward self-con- 
trol, the control of Nature, and civilization. Both kinds 
of record are eagerly sought and carefully scanned by 
historical students, as evidences of a remoter past than 
the pen of history or the voice of legend reports. But, 
of the two, the linguistic remains are infinitely the more 
important and instructive ; and it is almost they alone 
which can serve the purpose of the ethnologist, since 
the others are indicative rather of a grade of develop- 
ment than of the special endowments or habits of a 
race. ‘The linguistic evidence has over even the physi- 
cal the advantage that it is far more abundant and 
varied, and therefore manageable. The differences in 
the kingdom of language are not like those which pre- 


274 LANGUAGE AND ETINOLOGY. 


vail within the limits of a single species of animals; 
they are equal, rather, in range to those which belong 
to the whole animal kingdom. It is, to the other, like 
a microscopic image thrown up by optical means upon 
a wall, where its parts may be examined and measured. 
and described and compared by even the unskilled stu- 
dent. Breadth of knowledge and competent judgment 
are to be won in physical ethnology only by rare 
opportunities, peculiar gifts, and prolonged training. 
Though languages are traditional institutions, they are 
of a special kind, capable of application to ethnological 
purposes far beyond any other, as being s0 various and 
go distinct as they are, capable of being looked at ob- 
jectively, and handled and compared with accuracy. 
They are persistent, also, at least to a degree far be- 
yond other institutions. 

To admit that a language can be exchanged, there- 
fore, is by no means to deny its value as a record of 
human history, even of race-history; it is only to put 
that value upon its proper basis, and confess those limi- 
tations which can in no manner be avoided, and of which 
a due consideration is needful to the proper use of lin- 
guistic evidence.’ It still remains true that, upon the 
whole, language is determined by race, since each human 
being usually learns to speak from his parents and others 
of the same blood. And the marked exceptions to this 
rule take place in the full light of historical record. 
Civilization facilitates mixture, as it does communica- 
tion. It is not the wild and obscure races which are, or 
have ever been, mixing blood and mixing or shifting 
speech upon a grand scale; it is the cultivated ones. | If 
one barbarous tribe overcomes another, unless the con- 
querors absorb the conquered into their own commu- 
nity, there is not usually a change of speech: but nations 


VALUE OF LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE. O45 


like the Romans and Arabs, who come with the force of 
an organized polity and a literature, extend their speech 
widely over strange peoples. Where the information 
derivable from language, therefore, is most needed, there 
it comes with the greatest presumption of accuracy. 
Hence, when the ethnological relations of a commu- 
nity or of a group of communities are to be settled, the 
first question is as to the affinities of its speech. This 
does not necessarily decide the case; the linguistic evi- 
dence may be overborne by some other; but nothing 
can. be determined without it; it lays the basis for fur- 
ther discussion. We need only to quote an example or 
two in illustration of this. The Basques are a white, 
“Caucasian” race; there is nothing in their other eth- 
nological characteristics which should forbid our con- 
necting them with any great division of the white race ; 
but their speech at once cuts them off from every other, 
and we accept its decision as authoritative. Out of what 
mixtures the original Iberians may have grown, we can- 
not tell; nor can we ever absolutely know that the 
Basques did not borrow their Euskarian dialect, as the 
French their Romanic dialect ; there are indefinite possi- 
bilities lying behind; but the language tells us a great 
deal, and probably all that will ever be within our reach. 
Again, of the Etruscans there are records and descrip- 
tions and pictures, and products, art and industrial; but 
to settle the relationship of the race the ethnologists 
with one consent appeal to the infinitesimal remnants 
of Etruscan speech: a single page of connected Etrus- 
can text, with but a hint of its meaning, would in the 
briefest time settle the question whether the race is to 
be connected with any other on earth, or whether, like 
the Basque, it is an isolated fragment. There lies be- 
fore us a vast and complicated problem in the Ameri- 


276 LANGUAGE AND ETHNOLOGY. 


can races; and here, again, it is their language that must 
do by far the greatest part of the work in solving it. 
American ethnology depends primarily and in bulk on 
the classifications and connections of dialects; till that 
foundation is laid, all is uncertain; although there are 
points involved which may not yield even to the combi- 
nation of all attainable evidence, from every quarter. 

We are to look for no real reconciliation between 
the results won by the two great branches of ethnologi- 
cal study until their methods are more fully established 
than at present; nor is it worth while to hurry the pro- 
cess—least of all, to attempt prematurely an artificial 
and superficial scheme of combination. All that will 
come in good time, if we only have patience. Within 
its own domain, each is supreme. The classifications 
and relations of speech are what they are, without any 
reference to underlying questions of race; and yet, 
those questions cannot be kept down and ignored by 
the linguist: his study is too thoroughly a_ historical 
one, it involves too much of the element of race in the 
later periods, to allow of our leaving that element out 
of account for the earlier. As one of the leading 
branches of historical investigation, as claiming to make 
its contribution to the elucidation of the past, it must 
offer its results to be criticised by every other concur- 
rent branch. And to exaggerate its claims, or to put 
them upon.a false basis, is both needless and harmful. 
If any one is not content with the degree of dignity and 
authority that belongs to the science of language when 
kept within the very strictest limits which a sound and 
impartial criticism is impelled to draw, there are other 
departments in which his aid will be welcomed, and he 
had better turn to them. 

There is one more point calling for brief notice in 


GENETIC CLASSIFICATION. 277 


connection with our classification of the dialects of the 
world. That classification aimed at being a strictly 
genetical one, each family embracing those tongues 
which, by the sum of all available evidences, were 
deemed traceable to a common ancestor. To the his- 
torical philologist, still deep in the labor of determin- 
ing relations and tracing out the course of structural 
development, this is by far the most important of all ; 
indeed, the value of any other. at present is so small as 
to be hardly worthy of notice. The wider distinction 
of languages as isolating, agglutinative, and inflective, 
which has a degree of currency and familiarity, offers a 
convenient, but far from exact or absolute, test by which 
the character of linguistic structure may be tried; the 
three degrees lie in a certain line of progress, but, as in 
all such cases, pass into one another. To lay any stress 
upon this as a basis of classification is like making the 
character of the hair or the color of the skin a basis of 
classification in physical ethnology, or the number of sta- 
mens or the combination of leaves in botany: it ignores 
and overrides other distinctions of an equal or of greater 
importance. If the naturalist had the actual certainty 
which the linguist has of the common descent of related 
species, he would care little for any other classification, 
but would spend his strength upon the elaboration and 
perfection of this one. The linguist has enough of this 
still left to do; and till it is all accomplished, at any 
rate, any other is of small account to him. 


CHAPTER XIV. 
NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


Language an acquisition, a part of culture. Its universality among men ; 
limitation to man; difference between human and other means of ex- 
pression, Communication the direct motive to the production of 
speech; this the conscious and determining element in all language- 
history. . Natural cries as basis of the development; question as to 
their nature and range; postulation of instinctive articulate utter- 
ances uncalled for. Use of the voice as principal means of expres- 
sion. Imitative element in the beginnings of speech; range and 
limits of onomatopceic expression. The doctrine of roots. Suffi- 
ciency of this view of the origin of language; the opposing miracu- 
lous theory. Capacity involved in language-making; difference in 
this respect between men and lower animals. Relation of language 
to development of man; rate and manner of its growth. 


Ovr examination of the history of language, of its 
mode of transmission, preservation, and alteration, has 
shown us clearly enough what we are to hold respecting 
its nature. It is not a faculty, a capacity ; it is not an im- 
mediate exertion of the thinking power; it is a mediate 
product and an instrumentality. To many, superticial 
or prejudiced, inquirers this seems an unsatisfactory, 
even a low, view; but it is because they confound to- 
gether two very different senses of the word language. 
Man possesses, as one of his most marked and distinctive 
characteristics, a faculty or capacity of speech—or, more 


LANGUAGE AS CAPACITY AND AS PRODUCT. 219 


accurately, various faculties and capacities which lead 
inevitably to the production of speech: but the facul- 
ties are one thing, and their elaborated products are 
another and very different one. So man has a capacity 
for art, for the invention of instruments, for finding out 
and applying the resources of mathematics, for many 
other great and noble things; but no man is born an 
artist, an engineer, or a caleulist, any more than he is 
born a speaker. In regard to these various exercises of 
our activities our condition is the same. In all alike, the 
race has been undergoing almost from the beginning a 
training of its capacities, step by step, each step being em- 
bodied in a product. The growth of art implies a period 
of rude shapings, and a rise to higher and higher pro- 
duction by improving on former models and processes. 
Mechanics still more clearly has the same history ; it 
was by the use of ruder instruments, by the dexterity 
acquired in that use and the consequent suggestion of 
improvements, that men came finally to locomotives and 
power-looms. Mathematics began with the apprehen- 
sion that one and one are two, and its development has 
been like that of the others. And every new indi- 
vidual of the race has to go through the same series of 
steps, from the same humble beginnings. Only, he 
takes them at lightning-speed, as compared with their 
first elaboration; because he is led onward by others 
over a beaten and smoothed track. The half-grown boy 
now is often a more advanced mathematician or mech- 
anician than the wisest of the Greeks: not because his 
gifts are superior to theirs, but because he has only to 
receive and assimilate what they and their successors 
have wrought out for him. Though possessing the 
endowments of a Homer or a Demosthenes, no man 
can speak any language until he has learned it, as truly 


13 


Po ecennswennorunes 


980 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


learned it as he learns the multiplication-table, or the 
demonstrations of Euclid. 

Now these collected products of the exercise of 
man’s developing powers, which are passed on from 
one generation to another, increasing and changing as 
they go, we call institutions, constituents of our culture. 
Something of them is possessed by every section of 
humanity. There is no member of any community, 
however barbarous, who is not raised vastly above what 
he would otherwise be by learning what his fellows 
have to teach him, acquiring their fragments of knowl- 
edge, however scanty, and their arts—including the art 
of speech. Doubtless the most degraded community 
has more to teach the most gifted individual than he 
would have learned, to the end of his life, by the use of 
his own faculties unaided; certainly this is so as regards 
speech. Every one acquires that which the accident of 
birth places within his reach, exercising his faculties 
upon that foundation, expanded and at the same time 
constrained by it, making to it his individual contribu- 
tion, if he have one to make: just as truly in the case 
of language as of any other part. Language is in no 
way to be separated from the rest: it is in some re- 
spects very unlike them; but so are they unlike one 
another; if it be the one most fundamentally impor- 
tant, most highly characteristic, most obviously the 
product and expression of reason, that is only a differ- 
ence of degree. 

We regard every language, then, as an institution, 
one of those which, in each community, make up its 
culture. Like all the constituent elements of culture, 
it is various in every community, even in the different 
individuals composing each. There are communities in 
which it has come down within the strict limits of race 5 


UNIVERSALITY OF “LANGUAGE. 281 


In others it has been, partly or wholly, taken from 
strange races ; for, like the rest, it is capable of being 
transferred or shifted. Race-characteristies can only 20 
down by blood; but race-acquisitions—language not 
less than religion, or science—can be borrowed and 
lent. 

The universality of language, we may remark in 
passing, is thus due to nothing more profound or mys- 
terious than that every division of the human race has 
been long enough in existence for its language-capaci- 
ties to work themselves out to some manner of result. 
Precisely so, there is a universal possession by men of 
some body of instruments, to help the hands in provid- 
ing for human needs. This universality does not at all 
prove that, if we could see coming into being a new 
race, by whatever means brought the existing race into 
being, we should find it within any definite assignable 
period possessed of insiruments—or of speech. 

But, as things are, every community of men has a 
common language, while none of the lower animals are 
possessed of such; their means of communication being 
of so different a character that it has no right to be 
called by the same name. No special obligation rests 
upon the linguist to explain this difference, any more 
than upon the historian of art or of mechanics to ex- 
plain why the lower animals are neither artists nor 
machine-makers. It is enough for him. to point out 
that, the gifts of man being such as they are, he in- 
variably comes to the possession of this as well as of the 
other elements of culture, while not one of the lower 
races has shown itself capable of originating a civiliza- 
tion, in any element, linguistic or other; their utmost 
capacity being that of being trained by the higher race 
to the exercise of activities which in their own keeping 


282 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


had remained undeveloped, of being taught various arts 
and acts, performed partly mechanically, partly with a 
certain hardly determinable degree of intelligence. But 
the subject is one upon which erroneous views are s0 
prevalent that we can hardly help giving it a brief con- 
sideration. 

The essential difference, which separates man’s 
means of communication in kind as well as degree from 
that of the other animals, is that, while the latter is 
instinctive, the former is, in all its parts, arbitrary and 
conventional. That this is so, the whole course of our 
exposition has sufficiently shown. It is fully proved by 
the single circumstance that for each object, or act, or 
quality, there are as many names as there are languages 
in the world, each answering as good a purpose as any 
other, and capable of being substituted for another in 
the usage of any individual. There is not in a known 
language a single item which can be truly claimed to 
exist dices, ‘by nature;’ each stands in its accepted use 
Oéce, ‘by an act of attribution, in which men’s circum- 
stances, habits, preferences, will, are the determining 
force. Even where the onomatopeeic or imitative ele- 
ment is most conspicuous—as in cuckoo and pewee, in 
crack and whiz—there is no tie of necessity, but only 
of convenience: if there were a necessity, it would ex- 
tend equally to other animals and other noises; and 
also to all tongues; while in fact these conceptions have 
elsewhere wholly other names. No man can become 
possessed of any existing language without learning its 
no animal (that we know of) has any expression which 
he learns, which is not the direct gift of nature to him. 
We are not less generously treated in this latter respect 
than the animals; we have also our “natural” ex- 
pression, in grimace, gesture, and tone; and we make 


VARIOUS MEANS OF EXPRESSION. 283 


use of it: on the one hand, for communication where 
the usual conventional means is made of no ayail—as 
between men of different tongue, or those who by deaf- 
ness are cut off from the use of speech—and, on the 
other hand, for embellishing and explaining and enfore- 
ing our ordinary language: where it is of a power and 
value that no student of language can afford to over- 
look. In the domain of feeling and persuasion, in all 
that is intended to impress the personality of the com- 
municator upon the recipient, it possesses the highest 
consequence. We say with literal truth that a look, a 
tone, a gesture, is often more eloquent than elaborate 
speech. Language is harmed for some uses by its con- 
ventionality. Words of sympathy or affection can be 
repeated parrot-like by one whose heartless tone takes 
all value from them; there is no persuasion in a dis- 
course which is given as if from a mere animated 
speaking-machine. And herein comes clearly to light 
the true sphere of natural expression; it indicates feel- 
ing, and feeling only. From the ery and groan and 
laugh and smile up to the lightest variations of tone 
and feature which the skilled elocutionist uses, it is 
emotional, subjective. Not a tittle of evidence has 
ever been brought forward to show that there is such 
a thing as the natural expression of an intellectual 
conception, of a judgment, of a cognition. It is 
where expression quits its emotional natural basis, and 
turns to intellectual uses, that the history of language 
begins. 

Nor is it less plain what inaugurates the conversion, 
and becomes the main determining element in the 
whole history of production of speech ; it is the desire 
of communication. This turns the instinctive into the | 
intentional. As itself becomes more distinct and con- - 


ee 


984 “NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


scious, it lifts expression of all kinds above its natural 
basis, and makes of it an instrumentality ; capable, as 
such, of indefinite extension and improvement. He 
who (as many do) leaves this force out of account, can- 
not but make utter shipwreck of his whole linguistic 
philosophy. Where the impulse to communication is 
wanting, no speech comes into being. Here, again, the 
parallelism between language and the other departments 
of culture is close and instructive. The man growing 
up in solitude would initiate no culture. He would 


never come to a knowledge of any of the higher things 


of which he was capable. It needs not only the inward 
power, but also the outward occasion, to make man 
what he is capable of becoming. This is characteristic 
of his whole historical attitude. ‘Races and generations 


of men have passed away in barbarism and ignorance 


who were as capable of civilization as the mass of the 
present civilized communities: indeed, there are such 
actually passing away around us. It is in no wise to 
deny the grand endowments of human nature that we 
ascribe the acquisition of speech to an external induce- 
ment. We may, illustrate the case by a comparison. 
A stone has lain motionless for ages on the verge of a 
precipice, and may lie there for ages longer; all the 
cosmic forces of gravity will not stir it. But a chance 
thrust from some passing animal jostles it from its 
equilibrium, and it goes crashing down. Which, shall 
we say, caused the fall? gravity, or the thrust? ach, 
in its way; the great force would not have wrought 
this particular effect but for the aid of the petty one; 
and there is nothing derogatory to the dignity of 
gravitation in admitting the fact. Just so in language: 
the great and wonderful powers of the human soul 
would never move in this particular direction but for 


THE IMPULSE TO COMMUNICATION. 285 


the added push given by the desire of communication ; 
when this leads the way, all the rest follows. 

Our recognition of the determining force of this 
element is far from implying that communication is the 
sole end, or the highest end, of speech. We have suf- 
ficiently noticed, in the second chapter, the infinite value 
of expression to the operations of each individual mind 
and soul, and its fundamental value as an element in 
the progress of the race. But it is here as elsewhere; 
men strive after that which is nearest and most obvious 
to them, and attain thereby a vast deal more than they 
foresaw. In the devising and constructing of instru- 
ments, of all kinds, men have had directly in view only 
what may be called the lower uses of them, their im- 
mediate contributions to comfort and safety and sensu- 
ous enjoyment; but the result has been a calling-out of 
many of the higher powers which could find appropriate 
exercise in no other way, a reduction of Nature to ser- 
vice in a manner that allows a part of the race to engage 
in the more elevated and elevating occupations; and a 
discovery of truths in bewildering abundance. <A yet 
closer parallel is afforded by thé closely kindred art of 
writing, which adds to and enhances all the advantages 
belonging to the art of speech, and is as indispensable 
to the highest culture as is speech to the lower; but, 
like speech, it came into being by a process in which 
the only conscious motive was communication ; all its 
superior uses followed in the train of that, and were 
unthought of until experience disclosed them ; indeed, 
they are even yet unthought of by the greater part of 
those who derive advantage from them. And this last 
is true, to a degree which we must. not fail to observe, 
of spoken language also: its higher uses are not con- 
scious ones. Not one in a hundred, or a thousand, of 


286 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


those who speak realizes that he “ uses language ;” but 
there is no one who does not know well enough that he 
can talk. That is to say, language, to the general ap- 
prehension of its users, is simply a means of receiving 
from others and giving to them: what it is to the in- 
dividual soul, what it is to the race, few have reach of 
vision to see. And least of all is such penetration to be 
credited to primitive man: he, especially, needs some 
motive right before his eyes, and of which he can feel 
every moment the impelling force; and the desire to 
communicate with his fellows is that motive, the sole 


' and the wholly sufficient one. He has no thoughts 


swelling in his soul and demanding utterance; he has 
no foreboding of high capacities which only need educa- 
tion to make him a little lower than the angels; he 
feels nothing but the nearest and most urgent needs. 
If language broke out from within, driven by the 
wants of the soul, it ought to come forth fastest and 
most fully in the solitary ; since he, cut off from other 
means of improvement, is thrown back upon this as his 
only resource: but the solitary man is as speechless as 
the lower animals. 

There might be ground for questioning this conclu- 
sion as to the decisive value of the impulse to com- 
munication in the initiation of language-history, if the 
after-course of that history showed entire independence 
of it. That is no acceptable scientific explanation 
which calls in a special force at the beginning, like a 
deus ex machina, to accomplish what we cannot see to 
be otherwise feasible, and then to retire and act no 
more. But communication is the leading determinative 
force throughout. This it is for which and by which 
we make our first acquisitions; this leads us, when 
circumstances change, to lay our old acquisitions aside 


a 
: 
- 
q 

| 

: 

. 
; 


EE — 


NATURAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE. 287 


and make new; this determines the unity of a lan- 
guage, and puts a restraint upon its dialectic variation ; 
this is, both consciously and unconsciously, ee 
by every individual as the regulator: we speak so as to 
be intelligible to others; we hear and learn that we/ 
may understand them; we do not speak simply as we’ 
ourselves choose, letting others understand us if they 
can and will. 

If this be so, then we have virtually solved, so far 
as it admits of solution, the problem of the origin of 
language ; we have ascertained what was the original 
basis, and what the character of its development. The 
basis was the natural cries of human beings, expressive 
of their feelings, and capable of being understood as 
such by their fellows. That is to say, the basis so far 
as audible speech is concerned ; for it is not to be main- 
tained that this was the only, or even the principal, 
means of primitive expression. Gesture and grimace 
are every whit as natural and as immediately intelli- \ 
gible; and in the undeveloped condition of expression — 
every available means will unquestionably have been } 
resorted to, perhaps with a long predominance of the | 
visible over the audible. But it cannot be that the use \ 
of the voice for expression should not have been sug- 
gested and initiated by Nature’s own endowments in 
this direction. 

Here, however, comes in a question respecting which 
even the most recent opinions, and among those who in 
general accept the view of language here taken, are 
divided. How wide was this basis, and of what and 
how definite character? Did it consist of articulate 
sounds instinctively attached to certain conceptions 2 
Was there a limited natural vocabulary of actual words 
or roots, of the same kind with later language, and 


\ 
\ 


288 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


needing only to be extended into the latter? There 
are those who would answer these questions in the at- 
fimative, and who hold, therefore, that the fruitful way 
to investigate concretely the problem of the origin of 
language is to study the means of expression of the 
lower animals, especially of those which stand nearest 
to man, in order to find there something analogous with 
the roots of our speech. But this view has its basis in 
the clinging impression, which many of those who rea- 
son and write about language cannot possibly get rid 
of, that there is somehow a real internal connection be- 
tween at least a part of our words and the ideas which 
these represent—if one could only find out what it is. 
If we recognize the truths that all existing human 
speech is in every part and particle conventional, that 
all of which there is record in the past was of the same 
character, and that there is an utter absence of evidence 


/ going to show that any uttered sound, any combination 


| 


of articulations, comes or ever came into existence as 
the natural sign of an intellectual conception—we shall 


~ be led to look with extreme disfavor upon any sugges- 


se 


tion of this kind., Beyond all question, it is wholly 
uncalled for by necessity: the tones significant of feel- 
ing, of which no one can deny the existence because 
they are still an important part of our expression, are 
fully capable of becoming the effective initiators of 
language. Spoken language began, we may say, when 
a cry of pain, formerly wrung out by real suffering, and 
seen to be understood and sympathized with, was re- 
peated in imitation, no longer as a mere instinctive 


- utterance, but for the purpose of intimating to another, 


“T am (was, shall be) suffering ;” when an angry growl, 
formerly the direct expression of passion, was repro- 
duced to signify disapprobation and threatening ; and 


INSTINCTS OF MAN. 289 


the like. This was enough to serve as foundation for 
all that should be built upon it. 

It is further to be considered, in judging this point, 
that, as we approach man, the general capacities in- 
crease, but the specific instincts, the already formed 
and as it were educated capacities, decrease. It is 
among the insects that we find these wonderful arts 
which seem like the perfected results of training of a 
limited intellect ; it is among birds that we find specific 
modes of nest-building and a highly art-like, almost 
artistic, song. Man is capable of acquiring everything, 
but he begins in the actual possession of next to noth- 
ing. Except suckling, he can hardly be said to be born 
with an instinct. His long helpless infancy, while the 
chicken and the calf run about and help themselves 
from the very day of their birth, is characteristic of 
Nature’s whole mode of treatment of him. There is 
‘no plausibility in the suggestion that he should have 
begun social life with a naturally implanted capital of 
the means of social communication—and any more in 
the form of words than in that of gestures. It is a 
blunder of our educated habit to regard the voice as 
the specific instrument of expression; it is only one of 
several instruments. We might just as hopefully look 
among the higher animals for the particular and definite 
beginnings out of which our clothes, our buildings, our 
instruments, are a development. In these departments 
of human production, we see clearly enough what the 
natural beginning should have been. No animal save 
man is known to make any attempt at dressing ; but if 
any did, it would amount to nothing; for there are 
tribes of men that go utterly, or almost utterly, naked ; 
and no, one, probably, would think of suggesting that 
the rudiments of dress are not a turning to account, for 


290 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


perceived purposes of comfort or decency, just such 
materials as Nature placed in man’s way. ‘The earliest 
shelters were of the same sort: it would be of high in- 
terest to find the animals nearest to man showing that 
kind of capacity which he possesses, of putting to use 
freely, simply as directed by circumstances, the varied 
resources of Nature; but probably the idea has never 
come into any one’s head that man, as an animal unedu- 
cated, would be found building a particular style of 
shelter (as the beaver its dam, the oriole its hanging 
nest, the wasp its cells), out of which have grown, by 
a process showing nowhere a saltus or lacuna, the 
huts and palaces and temples of the more educated 
races. And the same thing is true of instruments: 
clubs and stones we allow to have been the first, only 
because Nature offers such most conveniently within 
reach of the beings who were gifted with mind enough 
to see how they could be made available for perceived 
needs. 

Now it is only an unclear or a false view of the na- 
ture of speech that prevents any from seeing that its 
case is entirely analogous with these others, and that to 
postulate, and then seek for traces of, a primitive basis 
for language in the form of specific articulate signs for 
ideas isan uncalled-for, even a necessarily vain and futile, 
proceeding. It is, indeed, a matter of high interest, 
and promising of valuable instruction, to investigate as 
closely as possible the means of communication of the 
lower animals, so.as to determine its character and 
scope; but the point calling for special attention 1s, 
how far the natural tones and utterances and postures 
and movements are used secondarily and mediately, for 
the purpose of signifying something, in rudimentary 
correspondence with what we have seen to be the infer- 


THE VOICE AS MEANS OF EXPRESSION, 291 


able beginnings of human language-making. We need 
not be surprised to find, in more than one quarter, such 
methods of communication in use, only limited, and, 
for lack of the right kind and degree of capacity in 
their users, incapable of development; and these would 
be the real analogues of speech, and would bridge the 
saltus of which some are so afraid. If the Darwinian 
theory is true, and man a development out of some 
lower animal, it is at any rate conceded that the last 
and nearest transition-forms have perished, perhaps ex- 
terminated by him in the struggle for existence, as his 
special rivals, during his prehistoric ages of wild- 
ness; if they could be restored, we should find the 


transition-forms toward our speech to be, not at all a 


minor provision of natural articulate signs, but an in- 
ferior system of conventional signs, in tone, gesture, 
and grimace. 

As between the three natural means of expression 
just mentioned, and constantly had in view by us in 
this discussion, it is simply by a kind of process of 
natural selection and survival of the fittest that the 
voice has gained the upper hand, and come to be go 
much the most prominent that we give the name of 
language (‘ tonguiness’) to all expression. There is no 
mysterious connection between the thinking apparatus 
and the articulating apparatus, whereby the action that 
forms a thought sets the tongue swinging to utter it. 
Apart from the emotional (and non-articulate) natural 


cries and tones, the muscles of the larynx and mouth | 


stl ace 


are no nearer to the soul than those of voluntary mo- 
tion, by which, among other things, gestures are pro- | 


duced. Besides the lack*of all evidence in language, / 


rightly understood, to indicate such connection, it is 
sufficiently disproved, in a positive way, by the absence 


Ho Stem 
— 
a 
Ire sat, 


292 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


of vocal expression in the deaf, whose thinking and ar- 
ticulating apparatus is all in normal order, but who, by 
the numbing of the single nerve of audition, are re- 
moved from the disturbing infection of conventional 
speech ; it ought to be many times more instructive to 
watch the “natural utterances” of a person thus affected 
than to study the jabberings of monkeys. — The analogy 
between gesture and speech here is in the highest de- 
gree instructive. The hands and arms are muscular 
instruments under control of the same mind which pro- 
duces conceptions and judgments. Among their mani- 
fold capacities, they are able to make gestures, of infi- 
nite variety, all of which are reported by the vibrations 
of the luminiferous ether to a certain apprehending or- 
gan, the eye, both of the maker and of others. There 
ig a natural basis of instinctive gesture, which to the 
human intellect is capable of suggesting a method of 
intimation of intended meaning, developable into a 
complete system of expression ; and it is so developed 
for the use of those who by lack of power to hear are 
cut off from the superior advantages of the other means 
of expression. In the same manner, the larynx and 
the parts which lie between it and the outer world are 
muscular organs, movable by the same will which moves 
the arms and hands. The parts have other offices to 
perform besides that of shaping tone; and the tone 
which it is the sole office of the vocal chords to generate 
is for other purposes as well as that of utterance: yet, 
along with other things, they can produce an indefinite 
variety of modified vibrations, reported through the 
sympathetic vibrations of the air to another apprehend- 
ing organ, the ear, both of the producer and of others; 
and the sounds so reported are capable of combination 
into groups practically infinite in number. There is a 


THE VOICE AS MEANS OF EXPRESSION. 293 


natural basis of tonic expression; and on this- and by 
its suggestion human intelligence has worked out a great 
number of diverse systems of expression, used, one or 
other of them, by all ordinarily endowed men. 

There is nothing here to require the admission of a 
peculiar connection between thought and articulate ut- 
terance. In a certain sense, it is true, the voice may 
fairly be said to have been given us for the purpose of 
speech ; but it is only as the hands have been given us 
to write with ; our speaking organs do also our tasting, 
breathing, eating. So iron has been given us to make 
rails with for fast traveling: that is to say, among the 
various substances provided in the world for man’s vari- 
ous uses, iron is the one best suited to this use; its 
qualities had only to be discovered by men, in the 
course of their experience of Nature, and, when the 
time for the use came, the perception of its adaptedness, 
and the application, necessarily followed. In the course 
of man’s experience, it has come to light that. the voice 
is, on the whole, the most available means of communi- 
cation, for reasons which are not hard to understand: 
it acts with least expenditure of effort; it leaves the 
hands, much more variously efficient and hard-worked 
members, at leisure for other work at the same time ; 
and it most easily compels attention from any direction. 
Only the smallest part of its capacities are laid under 
contribution for the uses of speech; of the indefinite 
number of distinguishable sounds which it can pro- 
duce, only a fraction, of twelve to fifty, are put to 
use in any one language; and there is nothing in the 
selection to characterize a race, or to be used (except 
in the same historical way as language in general) for 
ethnological distinction: from among the many possi- 
bles, these have chanced to be taken ; mainly the sounds 


294 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


easiest to make, and broadly distinguished from one an- 
other. 

Under these determining considerations, vocal utter- 
ance has become everywhere the leading means of ex- 
pression, and has so multiplied its resources that tone, 
and still more gesture, has assumed the subordinate 
office of aiding the effectiveness of what is uttered. 
And the lower the intellectual condition of the speaker 
and the spoken-to, the more indispensable is the addi- 
tion of tone and gesture. It belongs to the highest 
development of speech that the word written and 
read should have something like the same power as 
the word spoken and heard; that the personality of 
the writer, even his frame of mind, should be felt, 
and should move the sympathetic feeling of the reader. 
And yet, it should also be noted here that, as we saw 
in the twelfth chapter, there are languages (e. g. Chi- 
nese) in which tone and inflection come to be used, in a 
secondary and conventional way, to eke out the too 
scanty resources of intellectual designation. 

If we thus accept the impulse to communicate as 
the governing principle of speech-development, and the 
voice as the agent whose action we have especially to 
trace, it will not be difficult to establish other points in 
the earliest history. Whatever offered itself as the 
most feasible means of arriving at mutual understand- 
ing would be soonest turned to account. We have re- 
garded the reproduction, with intent to slonify some- 
thing, of the natural tones and cries, as the positively 
earliest speech ; but this would so immediately and cer- 
tainly come to be combined with imitative or onomato- 
poetic utterances, that the distinction in time between 
the two is rather theoretical than actual. Indeed, the 
reproduction itself is in a certain way onomatopoetic : 


ONOMATOPOETIC EXPRESSION. 295 - 


it imitates, so to speak, the cries of the human animal, | 
in order to intimate secondarily what those cries in their 
primary use signified directly. Just as soon, at any’ 
rate, as an inkling of the value of communication was 
gained, and the process began to be performed a little 
more consciously, the range of imitation would be ex- 
tended. This is a direct corollary to the principles laid 
down above. Mutual intelligence being aimed at, and 
audible utterance the means employed, audible sounds 
will be the matter most readily represented and con- 
veyed; just as something else would come easiest to 
one who used a different means. To repeat once more 
the old and well-worn, but telling, illustration: if we 
had the conception of a dog to signify, and the instru- 
mentality were pictorial, we should draw the outline 
figure of a dog; if the means were gesture, we should 
imitate some characteristic visible act of the animal— 
for example, its bite, or the wagging of its tail; if it 
were voice, we should say “bow-wow.” This is the 
simple explanation of the importance which is and must 
be attributed to the onomatopoetic principle in the early 
stages of language-making. We have no need of ap- 
pealing to any special tendency toward imitation. Man 
is, to be sure, an imitative animal, as we may fairly say ; 
but not in an instinctive or mechanical way; he is imi-| 
tative because he has the capacity to notice and appre-/ 
ciate what he sees, in other animals or in nature, and to 
reproduce it-in imitative show, if anything is to be 
gained thereby—whether amusement, or artistic pleas- 
ure, or communication. He is an imitator just as he is 
an artist ; the latter is only the higher development of 
the former. 

The scope of the imitative principle is by no means 
restricted to the sounds which occur in nature, although 


296 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


these are the most obvious and easiest subjects of sig- 
nificative reproduction. “What it is, may be seen in part 
from the range of onomatopoetic words in known lan- 
guages. There is a figurative use of imitation, where- 
by rapid, slow, abrupt, repetitive motions are capable of 
being signified by combinations of sounds which make 
something such an impression on the mind through 
the ear as the motions in question do through the eye. 
And we can well conceive that, while this was the chief 
_ efficient suggestion of expression, men’s minds may have 
| been sharpened to catch and incorporate analogies which 
~ now escape our notice, because, having a plentiful pro- 
vision of expression from other sources, we no longer 
have our attention keenly directed to them. Our judg- 
ments on such points as this can only be partially trust- 
ed, and must be tested with extreme caution, becatise 
we are all of us now the creatures of educated habit, and 
cannot look at things as men uneducated and with no 
formed habits would do. We can safely investigate and 
combine and speculate in this direction, if we keep fully 
in mind the governing principle that mutual intelli- 
gence is the end, and that whatever conduces to mutual 
intelligence, and that alone, is the acceptable means. 
We shall thus be saved from running off into, or tow- 
ard, that most absurd doctrine, the absolute natural sig- 
nificance of articulate sounds, and the successful intima- 
tion of complex ideas by a process of piecing these ele- 
ments together. / 

There are one or two further points connected with 
this theory of the imitative origin of language which 
call for a few words of explanation. In the first place, 
it does not rest on a discovery of the signs of onoma- 
topeeia as predominant in the early traceable stages of 
language. Those stages are still too far from the begin- 


THE IMITATIVE PRINCIPLE. 29% 


ning to furnish any such discovery. The intent was to 
find means of mutual intelligence; and when this was 
won, the way it came was a matter of small consequence, 
and might be left to be covered up. This has been, as 
we abundantly saw above, a governing tendency in the 
growth of speech down to the present time. Speakers 
know not and care not whence their words came; they 
know simply what they mean; even the wisest of us 
can trace the history of only a small part of his vocabu- 
lary, and only a little way. The very earliest dialects 
are as exclusively conventional as the latest; the savage 
has no keener sense of etymological connection than the 
man of higher civilization. Nothing has done so much 
to discredit the imitative theory with sound and sober 
_ linguistic scholars as the way in which some pass_be- 
yond the bounds of true science in their attempts to 
trace our living vocabularies to mimetic originals. The 
theory does, indeed, rest in part on the undeniable pres- 
ence of a considerable onomatopeic element in later 
speech, and on the fact that new material is actually 
won in this way through the whole history of language ; 
onomatopeeia is thus raised to the rank of a vera causa, 
attested by familiar fact; and nothing that is not so 
attested—tfor example, the assumed immediate intel- 
lectual significance of articulate combinations—has the 
right to stand as a causa at all; but it rests also in 
part, and in the main part, on the necessities of the case, 
as inferred from the whole traceable history of speech 
and its relation to thought, its use and its value. 
Here is just the other support which it needs: no ac- 
count of the origin of language is scientific which does 
not join directly on to the later history of language with- 
out a break, being of one piece with that history. 

But, in the second place, it may at first sight seem 


Sites rae 


erate 


298 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


to some that there is a break in the history: for why do 
we not still go on to make words abundantly by onoma- 
topeia? A moment’s thought will show the baseless- 
ness of this objection. The office of onomatopceia was 
the provision, by the easiest attainable method, of the 
means of mutual intelligence; in proportion, then, as it 
became easier to make the same provision by another 
method, the differentiation and new application of signs 
already existing, the primitive method went into com- 
parative disuse—as it has ever since continued, though 
never absolutely unused. 

Once more, our theory furnishes the satisfactory 
solution of a difficulty which has had influence with 
some minds. Why should the germs of speech be what 
we have called roots, elements indicative of such ab- 
stract things as acts and qualities? surely concrete 
objects are soonest and most easily apprehended by 
the mind. Without stopping to dispute on more philo- 
sophical grounds this last assertion, claiming instead 
that we apprehend only the concreted qualities and acts 
of objects, it will be more to the point with those who 


~~ feel the difficulty to note that the process of speech is 


one of signifying, and that only the separate qualities 
of objects, at any rate, are capable of being signified. 
To revert to our former example: there may be a state 
of mind in which there should exist a confused concrete 
impression of a dog, just sufticient to make it possible 
to recognize another as agreeing with one already seen, 
but without any distinct sense of its various attributes. 
But so long as that is the case, no production of a sign 
is possible: it is only when one has so clear a conception 
of its form that he can signify it by a rude outline pict- 
ure, or of its characteristic acts that he can reproduce 
the bite, or wag, or bark, in imitation of them, that he 


ROOTS. 999 


is ready for an act of language-making of which the dog 
shall be the subject. And so with every other case; 
the first acts of comparing and abstracting must. pre- 
cede, and the first signs must follow; even as we have 
before seen that it is through the whole history of 
speech: the conception first, then the nomenclative 
act. And bow-wow is a type, a normal example, of the 
whole genus “root.” It is a sign, a hint, that calls 
before the properly prepared mind a certain conception, 
or set of related conceptions: the animal itself, the act, 
the time and other circumstances of hearing it, and what 
followed. It does not mean any one of these things 
exclusively ; it comprehends them all. It is not a verb, 
for that adds the idea of predication; nor is it a name: 
it may be put to use in either of these two senses. 
What it comes nearest in itself to meaning is ‘ the action 
of barking ’—just that form of abstraction into which 
we now most naturally and properly cast the sense of a 
“root.” And so with both the other suggested signs. 
Only, the outline figure has a decidedly more concrete 
character than either of the others, and is in a certain 
way their antithesis. It is a curious fact, and one tell- 
ingly illustrative of how the character of the sign de- 
pends on the instrumentality by which it is made, that 
hieroglyphic systems of representation of thought (which 
are in their origin independent systems, parallel with 
speech, though they. are wont finally to come into servi- 
tude to speech) begin with the signs for concrete objects, 
and arrive from these, and secondarily, at the designa- 
tion of acts and qualities. In Chinese, a combination 
of the hieroglyphs of sun and moon makes the character 
for ‘light’ and ‘shine;’ in speech, on the contrary, 
both luminaries are apt to be named from their shin- 
ing (see above, p. 83). In Egyptian, a picture of a pair 


300 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


of legs in motion means ‘ walk;’ while, with us, the 
foot is so named as being the ‘walker.’ 

That by the methods thus described it was possible 
to make a provision of signs capable of development, by 
processes not different from those traceable in the his- 
toric period of language, into such vocabularies as we 
find actually existing, it does not seem as if any one 
could reasonably deny. If this is true, and if the 
methods are not only not inconsistent, but even in com- 
plete harmony, with the whole traceable course of hu- 
man action on language, then we have found an accept- 
able solution of that part of the problem we are seek- 
ing to solve which is at present within our reach. A 
scientific solution requires that we take man as he 1s, 
with no other gifts than those we see him to possess, 
but also with all those that constitute his endowment as 
man, and examine whether and how he would possess 
himself of the beginnings of speech, analogous with 
those which our historical analysis shows to have been 
the germs of the after-development, but beyond which 
historical research will not carry us. As he would, if 
need were, make, the acquisition now, so may he, or 
must he, have made it of old. This is not a part of 
the historical science of language, but a corollary to it, 
a subject for the anthropologist who is also a linguistic 
scholar, who knows what language is to man, and how. 
He is not prepared to deal with it who is merely master 
of the facts of many languages. 

Of course, a language thus produced would be a rude 
and rudimentary means of expression. But that con- 
stitutes, in the mind of the modern anthropologist, no 
bar to the acceptance of the theory. If we deny to 
primitive man the possession of the other elements of 
civilization, and hold him to have gradually developed 


IMPERFECTION OF PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. 301 


them out of scanty beginnings made by himself, then 

there is no reason why we should not hold the same | 
view in respect to language, which is only such an ele- 
ment. Even in existing languages the differences of 
degree are great, as in existing states of culture in gen- 
eral. An infinity of things can be said in English 
which cannot be said in Fijian or Hottentot; a vast 
deal, doubtless, can be said in Fijian or Hottentot 
which could not be said in the first human languages. 
For what can be done in the way of distinct, even cul- 
tivated and elaborate, expression, by only a few hun- 
dred formless roots, we have a brilliant, almost a start-_ 
ling, example. in the Chinese. Of how sentences can 
be made of roots alone, with the relations left to be sup- 
plied by the intelligently apprehending mind, the same 
tongue is a sufficient illustration. The Greek, or Ger- 
man, or English, can elaborate a thought in a period 
half a page long, determining by proper connectives 
the relation of each of its clauses to the central idea, 
and also, in widely varying degree and method, that of 


the members of each clause to one another. This isa . 


capacity which belongs only to languages of high cul- 
tivation, working on a richly inflective basis. Many 
another tongue can form only simple clauses, possessing 
no more intricate apparatus of connection than ‘ ands’ 
and ‘buts,’ though having form enough in its words 
to construct a clause of defined parts. Yet others lack 
this definition of parts; they strike only at the leading 
ideas, presenting them in such order that the hearer 
supplies the missing relations out of his general compre- 
hension of what must be the intended meaning. And 
it is but another step backward to the primitive root- 
condition of speech, where an utterance or two had to 
do the duty of a whole clause. Men thus began, not 


302 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


with parts of speech which they afterward learned to 
piece together into sentences, but with comprehensive 
utterances in which the parts of speech lay as yet unde- 
veloped, sentences in the germ; a single word signity- 
ing a whole statement, as even yet sometimes with us: 
only then from poverty, as now from economy. To 
demand that “sentences,” in the present sense of that 
term, with subject and predicate, with adjuncts and 
modifiers, should have been the first speech, is precisely 
analogous with demanding that the first human abodes 
should have contained at least two stories and a cellar; 
or that the earliest garments should not have lacked 
buttons and braces; or that the first instruments should 
have had handles, and been put together with screws. 
These conditions, in the last three cases, are at once 
recognized as possible only to a miraculous endowment 
of humanity, a gifting of man, at his birth, not with 
capacities alone, but also with their elaborated results, 
with the fruits of education ; and the assumption in re- 
gard to language is really precisely the same, a proper 
part of a miraculous theory of the origin of speech, but 
of no other. 

The word “ miraculous,” rather than “ divine,” is 
here used to characterize the theory in question, be- 
cause it is the only truly descriptive one. One may 
hold the views advocated in this chapter without any 
detriment to his belief in the divine origin of language ; 
since he may be persuaded that the capacities and ten- 
dencies which lead man universally and inevitably to 
the acquisition of speech were implanted in him by the 
Creator for that end, and only work themselves out to 
a foreseen and intended result. If language itself were 
a gift, a faculty, a capacity, it might admit of being 
regarded as the subject of direct bestowal; being only 


—————— —_— 


CAPACITIES INVOLVED IN SPEECH. 303 


a result, a historical result, to assert that it sprang into 
developed being along with man is to assert a miracle : 
the doctrine has no right to make its appearance except 
in company with a general miraculous account of the 
beginnings of human existence. That view of the 
nature of language which linguistic science establishes 
takes entirely away the foundation on which the doc- 
trine of divine origin, in its form as once held, reposed. 

The human capacity to which the production of 
language is most directly due is, as has been seen, the 
power of intelligently, and not by blind instinct alone, 
adapting means to ends. This is by no means a unitary 
capacity ; on the contrary, it is a highly composite and 
intricate one. But it does not belong to the linguistic 
student to unravel and explain, any more than to the 
‘student of the history of civilization in its other depart- 
ments; it falls, rather, to the student of the human 
mind and its powers, to the psychologist. So also with 
all the mental capacities involved in language, the 
psychic forces which underlie that practical faculty, and 
which, being by it brought to conscious action, are 
drawn out and trained and developed. The psycholo- 
gist has a work of highest interest and importance to 
do, in analyzing and exhibiting this ultimate ground- 
work, on which have grown up the great institutions 
that make man what he is: language, society, the arts 
of life, machinery, art, and so on; and in tracing the 
history of education of the human powers in connection 
with them ; and his aid and criticism must be every- 
where of great value to their student. And this is most 
of all the case with regard to language ; for language 
is In an especial manner the incorporation and revelation 
of the acts of the soul. Out of this relation has grown 
the error of those who look upon linguistic science as a 

14 


304 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


branch of psychology, would force it into a psychologic 
mould and conduct it by psychologic methods: an error 
which is so refuted by the whole view we have taken 
of language and its history, that we do not need to 
spend any more words upon it here. Language is 
merely that product and instrumentality of the inner 
powers which exhibits them most directly and most 
fully in their various modes of action ; by which, so far 
as the case admits, our inner consciousness is externized, 
turned up to the light for ourselves and others to see 
and study. 

Out of the same close relation grows another and a 
far grosser error, that of actually identifying speech 
with thought and reason. ‘This, too, we may take as 
sufficiently refuted by our whole argument ; nothing 
but the most imperfect comprehension of language can 
account for a blunder so radical. The word season, to 
be sure, is used so loosely, in such a variety of senses, 
that an unclear thinker and illogical arguer can com- 
paratively easily become confused by it; but no one 
who attempts to enlighten his fellow-men on this class 
of subjects is exeusable for such inability to grasp their 
most fundamental principles. Language is, upon the 
whole, the most conspicuous of the manifestations of 
man’s higher endowments, and the one of widest and 
deepest influence on every other; and the superiority 
of man’s endowments is vaguely known as reason—and 
that is the whole ground of the assertion of identity. 
There are many faculties which go to the production of 
speech ; and they have other modes of manifestation 
besides speech. And we have only to take the most 
normally endowed human being and cut off artificially 
the avenue of a single class of sensuous impressions, 
those of hearing, and he will never have any speech. 


WHY THE ANIMALS DO NOT SPEAK. 305 


If speech, then, is reason, reason will have to be defined 
as a function of the auditory nerve. 

Whether, among the powers that contribute to the 
production of language, there is one, or more than one, 
not belonging in any degree to a single animal below 
man, is a point which must be left to the psychologist 
to decide. It may fairly be claimed, however, that 
none such has yet been demonstrated ; and also, that 
none such is necessary : a simple difference of degree in 


the capacities common to both is amply sufficient to | 


-Suemereuraarman, 


account for the possession and the lack, on the one side ! 


and the other. A heightened power of comparison, of 
the general perception of resemblances and differences ; 
an accompanying higher power of abstraction, or of 
viewing the resemblances and differences as attributes, 
characteristic of the objects compared ; and, above all 
else, a heightened command of consciousness, 2 power 
of looking upon one’s self also ag acting and feeling, of 
studying one’s own mental movements—these, it is be- 
lieved, are the directions in which the decisive superi- 
ority is to be looked for.. It is the height of injustice 
to maintain that there is not an approach, and a very 
marked approach, made by some of the lower animals 
to the capacity of language. In the ratio of what we 
call their “intelligence,” they are able distinctly and 
fruitfully to associate conceptions with signs—signs, 
namely, which we make for them, and by which we 
guide and govern them. But, as an actual fact, their 
capacity, though rising thus far, stops short of the 
native production of such a sign, even of its acquisition 
from the higher race and its independent use among 
themselves. There is a long interval, incapable of 
being crossed by the lower animals, between their en- 
dowments and ours; and he is a coward who, out of 


306 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


fear for the preservation of man’s supremacy, attempts 
to stretch it out, or to set up barriers upon it. 

There is yet another important corollary from our 
established view of language as a constituent element 
of human civilization. Its production had nothing to 
do, as a cause, with the development of man out of any 
other and lower race. Its province was to raise man 
from a savage state to the plane which he was capable 
of reaching. The only development in which it was 
concerned is the historical development of man’s facul- 
ties. Except, of course, that minor and limited change 
which falls within the sphere of ordinary heredity. The 
descendant of a cultivated race is more cultivable than 
the descendant of a wild one. The capacity of a yet 
higher cultivation grows with the slow increase of cul- 
tivation; and if a people is suddenly brought in contact 
with a civilization too far in advance of it, it is rather 
deteriorated and wasted than elevated. The power of 
brain, the capacity of thought, is enhanced by speech 5 
but no such differences are produced as separate one 
animal species from another. All men speak, each race 
in accordance with its gift and culture; but all to- 
gether are only one species. To the zodlogist, man was 
what he is now when the first beginnings of speech 
were made; it is to the historian that he was infinitely 
different. “Man could not become man except by 
language ; but in order to possess language, he needed 
already to be man,” is one of those Orphic sayings 


which, if taken for what they are meant to be, poetic 


expressions whose apparently paradoxical character shall 
compel attention and suggest thought and inquiry, are 
admirable enough. To make them the foundation or 
test of scientific views is simply ridiculous; it is as if 
one were to say: “ A pig is not a pig without being 


* 


LANGUAGE-MAKING AN INCIDENT, NOT TASK. 30 


fattened ; but in order to be fattened he must first be 
apig.” ‘The trick of the aphorism in question lies in 
its play upon the double sense of the word man ; 
properly interpreted, it becomes an acceptable expres- 
sion of our own view: ‘Man could not rise from what 
he was by nature to what he was able and intended to 
become, and ought to become, except by the aid of 
speech; but he could never have produced speech had 
he not been at the outset gifted with just those powers 
of which we still sce him in possession, and which 
make him man.’ 

We have already noted the linguist’s inability at 
present to form even any valuable conjectures as to 
the precise point in the history of man at which the 
germs of speech should have appeared, and the time 
which they should have occupied in the successive steps 
of their development. Men’s views are greatly at vari- 
ance as to this, and with no prospect of reconciliation at 
_ present, because there is no criterion by which they can 
be tested. That the process was a slow one, all our 
knowledge of the history of later speech gives us reason 
to believe. As to the precise degree of slowness, that 
is an unessential point, which we may well enough leave 
for future knowledge to settle—if it can. What we 
have to guard especially against is the tendency to look 
upon language-making as a task in which men engage, 
to which they direct their attention, which absorbs a 
part of their nervous energy, so that they are thereby 
prevented from working as effectively in other direc- 
tions of effort. Language-making is a mere incident of 
social life and of cultural growth; its every act is sug- 
gested or called forth by an occasion which is by com- 
parison the engrossing thing, to which the nomenclative | 
act is wholly subordinate. It is as great an error to hold | 


—t 


308 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 


that at some period men are engaged in making and 
laying up expressions for their own future use and that 
of their descendants, as that, at another period, men are 
packing away conceptions and judgments for which their 
successors shall find expression. Each period provides 
just what it has occasion for; nothing more. <A gen- 
eration or period may, indeed, by a successful incorpo- 
ration in speech of an exceptionally fertile distinction, 
start a train of development which shall lead to immense 
consequences in the future, and lay a foundation on 
which a great deal shall admit of being built: such, for 
example (as we thought to see above), was the early 
Indo-European establishment of a special predicative 
form, a verb. This is truly analogous with those fortu- 
nate inventions or discoveries (like that of treating iron, 
of domesticating useful animals) which appear now and 
then to have given a happy turn to the history of a race, 
initiating an upward career of growth which would 
have seemed @ priori equally within the reach of any 
other race. Such occurrences we are in the habit of 
calling accidental; and properly enough, if we are care- 
ful to understand by this only that they are the prod- 
uct of forces and circumstances so numerous and so 
indeterminable that we cannot estimate them, and could 
not have predicted their result. But, slower or more 
rapid, the production of language is a continuous pro- 
cess; it varies in rate and kind with the circumstances 
and habits of the speaking community; but it never 
ceases; there was never a time when it was more truly 
going on than at present. 

What term we shall apply to the process and its 
result is a matter of very inferior consequence. Inven- 
tion, fabrication, devisal, production, generation—all 
these are terms which have their favorers and also their 


See. ee a Pe 


a OEE ee bad 
“a _ a 


LANGUAGE AN INSTITUTION. 309 


violent opposers. Provided we understand what the 
thing in reality is, we need care little about the phra- 
seology used in characterizing it. Each word may be 
not unfitly compared to an invention; it has its own 
place, mode, and circumstances of devisal, its prepara- 
tion in the previous habits of speech, its influence in 
determining the after-progress of speech-development ; 
but every language in the gross is an institution, on 
which scores or hundreds of generations and unnum- 
bered thousands of individual workers have labored. 


CHAPTER XY. 
THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE: CONCLUSION. 


Character of the study of language; its analogies with the physical 
sciences. Its historical methods; etymology; rules of its success- 
ful pursuit. Comparative philology and linguistic science. History 
of the scientific study of language. 


Wuar we have to observe here in conclusion with 
regard to the study of language must be very brief, and 
mainly in the way of more or less obvious corollary to 
what has been already said. With any one who accepts 
the views of language set forth above, the rest will fol- 
low as a matter of course; with one who does not, it is 
too late here to argue. 

Whether, in the first place, men be willing to allow 
to the study the name of a science or not, is a matter of 
the smallest moment. It has its own character, its own 
sphere, its own importance of bearing on other depart- 
ments of knowledge. If there are those whose defini- 
tion of a science excludes it, let it be so; the point is 
one on which no student of language need insist. 

What he does need to insist upon is that the charac- 
ter of his department of study be not misrepresented, in 
order to arrogate to it a kind and degree of consequence 
to which it is not entitled—by declaring it, for exam- 
ple, a physical or natural science, in these days when the 


- 
— = Ct 


THE WILL IN LANGUAGE. 311 


physical sciences are filling men’s minds with wonder at 
their achievements, and almost presuming to claim the 
title of science as belonging to themselves alone. It is 
curiously indicative of the present as an early and for- 
mative period in the history of this study, that there 
should exist a difference of opinion among its conspicu- 
ous followers as to whether it be a branch of physical or 
of historical science.. The difference may be now re- 
garded as pretty conclusively settled: certainly, it is 
high time that any one who takes the wrong view be 
read out of the ranks, as one who has the alphabet of 
the science still to learn. No study into which the acts 
and circumstances and habits of men enter, not only as 
an important, but even as the predominant and deter- 
mining element, can possibly be otherwise than a his- 
torical or moral science. Not one item of any existing 
tongue is ever uttered except by the will of the utterer; 
not one is produced, not one that has been produced or 
acquired is changed, except by causes residing in the 
human will, consisting in human needs and preferences 
and economies. There is no way of claiming a physical 
character for the study of such phenomena except by a 
thorough misapprehension of their nature, a perversion 
of their analogies with the facts of physical science. 
These analogies are real and striking, and are often 
fitly used as instructive illustrations. There is no 
branch of historical study which is so like a physical 
science as is linguistics, none which deals with such an 
infinite multiplicity of separate facts, capable of being 
observed, recorded, turned over, estimated in their vari- 
ous relations. A combination of articulate sounds form- 
ing a word is almost as objective an entity as a polyp or 
a fossil; it can be laid away on a sheet of paper, like a 
plant in a herbarium, for future leisurely examination. 


eNO 


312 THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 


Though a product of voluntary action, it is not an arti- 
ficiality ; what the producer consciously willed it to be is 
but the smallest part of what we seek to discover in it: 
we seek to read the circumstances which, unconsciously 
to himself, guided his will, and made the act what it 
was; we regard it as a part of a system, as a link ina 
historical series, as an indicator of capacity, of culture, 
of ethnological connection. So a flint-chip, a scratched 
outline of an animal, an ornament, is a product of in- 
tention; but it is also, as a historical record, pure of all 
intention; a fact as objectively trustworthy as is a fos- 
sil bone or footmark. The material of archeology is 
even more physical than that of linguistics; but no 
one has ever thought of calling archeology a physical 
science. 

As linguistics is a historical science, so its evidences 
are historical, and its methods of proof of the same 
character. There is no absolute demonstration about 
it; there is only probability, in the same varying degree 
as elsewhere in historical inquiry. There are no rules 
the strict application of which will lead to infallible 
results. Nothing will make dispensable the wide gath- 
ering-in of evidence, the careful sifting of it, so as to 
determine what bears upon the case in hand and how 
directly, the judicial balancing of apparently conflicting 
testimony, the refraining from pushing conclusions be- 
yond what the evidences warrant, the willingness to 
rest, when necessary, in a merely negative conclusion, 
which should characterize the historical investigator in 
all departments. 

The whole process of linguistic research begins in 
and depends upon etymology, the tracing out of the 
histories of individual words and elements. From 
words the investigation rises higher, to classes, to parts 


$ 
. — 
ot ia 


a ee eee eee 


ANCIENT AND MODERN ETYMOLOGY. 313 


of speech, to whole languages. On accuracy in etymo- 
logical processes, then, depends the success of the whole ; 
and the perfecting of the methods of etymologizing is 
what especially distinguishes the new linguistic science 
from the old. The old worked upon the same basis on 
which the new now works: namely, on the tracing of 
resemblances or analogies between words, in regard to 
form and meaning. But the former was hopelessly 
superficial. It was guided by surface likenesses, with- 
out regard to the essential diversity which might under- 
lie them—as if the naturalist were to compare and class 
together green leaves, green paper, green wings of in- 
sects, and green laminee of minerals; it was heedless of 
the sources whence its material came; it did not, in 
short, command its subject sufficiently to have a method. 
A wider knowledge of facts, and a consequent better 
comprehension of their relations, changed all this. 
Especially, the separation of languages into families, 
with their divisions and subdivisions, the recognition 
of non-relationships and relationships and degrees of 
relationship, effected the great revolution, by changing 
the principles on which the probable value of particu- 
lar evidences is estimated. It was seen that, whereas a 
close verbal resemblance between two nearly related 
tongues has the balance of probabilities in its favor, 
one between only distantly related tongues, or those 
regarded as unrelated, has the probabilities against it ; 
and hence, that, in order to be successful, comparative 
investigation must be carried on with strict regard to 
demonstrated affinities. While affinities are unsettled, 
of course, all comparisons are tentative only, and may 
be made in any direction, with due caution as to over- 
estimate of the results reached. But when a family 
like the Indo-European is constituted, with its branches 


stan. THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 


and sub-branches and dialects, all founded on the collec- 
tion and thorough examination of a vast body of evi- 
dence, and by its side another like the Semitic and yet 
another like the Scythian, then even cross-comparisons 
between the branches are to be held in strict subordina- 
tion to the general comparison of branch with branch, 
and cross-comparisons between families not less so: in- 
deed, they are not to be admitted at all, except as pos- 
sible evidences bearing on the question whether the 
families are not, after all, ultimately akin—a question 
which is ever theoretically an open one, but of wliich 
the extreme difficulty has been sufficiently pointed out 
in previous chapters. It is, at any rate, only when the 
structure and material of the families shall have become 
understood with equal thoroughness, by the bringing 
to bear of all the evidences lying within the boundaries 
of each, that apparent resemblances between them can 
be deemed genuine, or used as signs of original con- 
nection. It is not enough that such preparatory work 
be done in one family; all the subjects of comparison 
must be reduced to the same value before they can be 
treated as commensurable. 

There are, in short, two fundamental rules, under 
the government of which all comparative processes 
must be carried on: 1. comparisons must. have in view 
the established lines of genetic connection; and 2. the 
comparer must be thoroughly and equally versed in the 
materials of both sides of the comparison. For want of 
regard to them, men are even yet filling volumes with 
linguistic rubbish, drawing wide and worthless conclu- 
sions from unsound and insufficient premises. On the 
other hand, if they be duly heeded, there is no limit to 
the scale on which the comparative process may be car- 
ried on, and made fruitful of valuable results. We 


COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. 31d 


have already noticed that no fact in any language is 
completely understood until there has been brought to 
bear upon it the evidence of every other analogous fact, 
related or unrelated ;'and doubtless, to the end, so long 
as any corner of the earth remains unransacked, some 
of the views which we hold with confidence will be 
liable to modification or overthrow. 

The comparative method is really no more char- 
acteristic.of the study of language than of the other 
branches of modern inquiry. But it was sufficiently 
conspicuous in connection with the new start taken by 
the study early in this century to make the name of 
“ comparative philology,” like the earlier “ comparative 
anatomy” and the later “comparative mythology,” 
familiar and favored, for a time, beyond any other. 
And the title is still accurate enough, as applied to that 
aspect of the study in which it is engaged in collecting 
and sifting its material, in order to determine corre- 
spondences and relationships and penetrate the secrets 
cf structure and historic growth; but it is insufficient 
as applied to the whole study—the science of language, 
or linguistic science, or glottology. Comparative phi- 
lology and linguistic science, we may say, are two sides 
of the same study: the former deals primarily with the 
individual facts of a certain body of languages, classify- 
ing them, tracing out their relations, and arriving at the 
conclusions they suggest ; the latter makes the laws and 
general principles of speech its main subject, and uses 
particular facts rather as illustrations. The one is the 
working phase, the other the regulative and critical and 
teaching phase of the science. The one is more impor- 
tant as a part of special training, the other as an ele- 
ment of general culture—if, indeed, it be proper to raise 
any question as to their relative importance, even to 


316 THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 


the special student of language; for the lack of either 
will equally unfit him for doing the soundest and best 
service. | | 

Yet the two are certainly different enough to make 
it possible that a scholar should excel in the one and not 
in the other. The science of language runs out, on its 
comparative side, into an infinity of details, like chem- 
istry or zodlogy ; and one may be extremely well versed 
in the manipulation-of its special processes while wholly 
wrong as regards its grander generalizations: just as 
one may be a skillful analyst while knowing little or 
nothing of the philosophy of chemistry, or eminent in 
the comparative anatomy of animals with no sound 
knowledge or judgment as to the principles of biology. 
To illustrate this, it would be easy to cite remarkable 
examples of men of the present generation, enjoying 
high distinction as comparative philologists, who, as 
soon as they attempt to reason on the wider truths of 
linguistic science, fall into incongruities and absurdities ; 
or, in matters of minor consequence, they show in mani- 
fold ways the lack of a sound and defensible basis of 
general theoretical’ views. Comparative work of the 
broadest scope and greatest value has long been done 
and is still doing; but the science of language is only 
in the most recent period taking shape ; and its princi- 
ples are still subjects of great diversity of opinion and 
of lively controversy. It is high time that this state of 
things, tolerable only in the growing and shaping period 
of a study, should come to an end, and that, as in other 
sciences of observation and deduction—for example, in 
chemistry, zodlogy, geology—there should be acknowl- 
edged to exist a body, not of facts only, but of truths, 
so well established that he who rejects them shall have 
no claim to be considered a man of science. 


HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE. 317 


To review the history of the study is a task for 
which we have no room remaining, and which may well 
enough be left here unattempted; it is a subject by it- 
self, and has been treated in independent works.’ The 
beginnings of the science lie as far back in the past as 
the time when men first began to inquire and to specu- 
late concerning the facts which they observed in them- 
selves and in the world about them. ‘The germs of all 
the most important modern doctrines are to be found in 
the reasonings of the Greek philosophers, for example ; 
but unclearly apprehended, and mixed with much that 
is erroneous. ‘Their basis of knowledge was almost en- 
tirely limited to the facts of their own language, and 
hence insufficient for sound generalization. In the 
great progress which has taken place during the last 
century, resulting in the elaboration of a whole sister- 
hood of new sciences, it was in the nature of things 
impossible that linguistics should not come into being 
with the rest; and it came. The movement toward it 
was well initiated in the last century, by the suggestive 
and inciting deductions and speculations of men like 
Leibnitz and Herder, by the wide assemblage of facts 
and first classifications of language by the Russians 
under Catherine and by Adelung and Vater and their 
like, and by the introduction of the Sanskrit to the 
knowledge of Europe, and the intimation of its connec- 
tions and importance, by Jones and Colebrooke. No 


1 Important authorities are: L. Lersch, Sprachphilosophie der Alten 
(1840); H. Steinthal, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen 
und Romern (1862-8); T. Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und 
orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland (1869). Dr. J. Jolly has added 
a sketch of the subject, in a couple of chapters, to his German version of 
the author’s “Language and the Study of Language”? (Munich, 1874); 
and many interesting details are given in M. Miiller’s “ Lectures on the 
Science of Language,” first series. 


318 THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 


one thing was so decisive of the rapid success of the 
movement as this last ; the long-gathering facts at once 
fell into their proper places, with clearly exhibited rela- 
tions, and on the basis of Indo-European philology was 
built up the science of comparative philology. J red- 
erick Schlegel was a forerunner of the study; more than 
any other man, Francis Bopp was its leader. Parallel 
with Bopp’s great Comparative Grammar of Indo-Eu- 
ropean tongues came forth Jacob Grimm’s Comparative 
Grammar of the Germanic branch of the family, each 
in its own way a masterpiece, and both together raising 
the historical study of language at once to the rank of 
a science. 

Almost all these names, it will be observed; are 
German ; and, in truth, to Germany belongs nearly the 
whole credit of the development of comparative phi- 
lology; the contributions made to it from other coun- 
tries are of only subordinate value. In Germany, the 
names of George Curtius, Pott, Benfey, Schleicher, 
Kuhn, Leo Meyer, are perhaps the most conspicuous, 
in the generation still mainly upon the stage; but they 
have so many fellows of nearly equal eminence that 
it is almost invidious to begin specification and to stop 
anywhere, without going on to include as many more. 
Outside of Germany, Rask in Denmark, Burnonuf in 
France, and Ascoli in Italy, have most right to be men- 
tioned on the same page with the great German masters. 

But while Germany is the home of comparative 
philology, the scholars of that country have, as was 
hinted above, distinguished themselves much less in 
that which we have called the science of language. 
There is among them (not less than elsewhere) such 
discordance on points of fundamental importance, such 
uncertainty of view, such carelessness of consistency, 


THE SCIENCE NOT YET ESTABLISHED. 319 


that a German science of language cannot be said yet 
to have an existence. And, accustomed as the world is 
to look to Germany for guidance in all matters pertain- 
ing to this subject, until they shall come to something 
like agreement it will hardly be possible to claim that 
there exists a world’s science of language. In the pres- 
ent condition, however, of linguistic study on the one 
side and of anthropology on the other, it cannot be that 
the period of chaos will endure much longer; if men 
will begin with learning to understand those facts in 
the life and growth of language which lie nearest to 
them, they will surely be guided to consistent and sen- 
sible views as to the past history, the origin, and the 
nature of this most ancient and valuable of man’s social 
institutions. 


TeNe DeHexe, 


@ or an, article, 129. 

abbreviation of words, 38, 50-55. 

ablaut, or variation of radical vowel, 
126, 128, 

Abyssinian group, 247. 

Accadian language, 235. 

accent, makes unity of word, 121. 

accidental correspondences of words, 
170. 

accusative subject of infinitive, 98. 

Achemenidan language, 185, 

acquisition of language by the indi- 
vidual, 7-31. 

acre, 39. 

additions to language, 108-133. 

adjective originally identical with 
noun, 205; comparison, 217, 218; 
its inflection lost in English, 103, 
104, 218; English noun convertible 
into, 132, 133. 

adverb, Indo-European, 208. 

Afghan language, 186. 

African languages, 254-258, 

agglutinative structure, 232. 

-at, (French) future ending, 92, 

Albanian language, 187. 

Algonkin language, 259, 260, 263. 

aller (French), 168. 

alphabetic sounds, how produced 
58-67 ; historical development of 
alphabet, 68-70. 

alterative tendency in language, 33, 
34. 

am, 90, 106. 

America, 136. 

American languages, 259-264. 

Americanisms, 156. 

Amharic language, 247. 

an or @, article, 129. 

analogy, its force in linguistic growth, 
74, 75. 


analytic and synthetic structure, 211, 
212. 

Anglo-Saxon, its relation to English, 
33-43, 

animals, the lower, relation of their 
expression to ours, 2, 8, 282, 290, 
291; their lack of speech, 305. 

animus, 187. 

Annamese language, 239, 

antiquity of man, 192. 

application, 88. ‘i 

oes apprehension, 88, 187. 
che language and its kin, 246, 
247. 

Aramaic language, 246, 247. 

archxology, its relation to linguistics, 
273, 812. 

Armenian language, 186; its ex- 
change of surd and sonant, 73. 

Armorican language, 183. 

articles, their origin, 95. 

articulate utterance, 68. 

Aryan languages, 180, 193, 194. 

as and also, 129, 

aspirate mutes, 64. 

aspiration, h, 66, 67. 

assimilation of sounds, 69-72. 

Assyrian language, 246, 247. 

Athabaskan group, 263. 

ga rtine of meaning of words, 
90-95. 

Australian languages, 244. 

auxiliary and relational words, their 
production, 90-96. 

Avestan language, 185. 


banana, 115. 

bank, bankrupt, 77. 

Bantu family, 256. 
Bashkir language, 231. 
Basque language, 258, 275. 


be, 90. 

Bengali language, 187. 

bishop, 45-48. 

blame, 55. 

Bohemian language, 182. 

book, 77. 

borrowing as means of adding to lan- 
guage, 114-120, 170. 

Brahui language, 244. 

brother and related words, 168, 171. 

Bulgarian language, 182. 

Burmese language, 239. 

Bushman language, 257. 

butterfly, 84, 87. 


Cesar, 135. 

Canaanitic languages, 246. 

Canarese language, 244. 

candidate, 77, 78. 

capacities involved in production and 
we of language, 145, 278, 279, 303, 
305. 

Carthaginian language, 246, 

cases, 216, 217; Indo-European, 
205-207 ; English and French, 10% 

Cancasian languages, 245. 

Celtic languages, 183. 

Chaldee language, 246, 247, 

change in language, its universality, 
33-36; illustrated from Anglo- 
Saxon, 36-43; classification of 
changes, 44; change in outer form 
of words, 45-75 ; in inner content, 
76-97; losses and additions, 98- 
152; its effect in producing dialects, 
153-169. 

child’s acquisition of language, 8-31. 

Chinese language, 111, 224) 225, 237- 
240, 301. 

class varieties of language, 155. 

classification of languages, 174, 229; 
its bearing on etymological pro- 
cesses, 313. 

Cochin-Chinese language, 239. 

comedy, comic, 142. 

communication, its influence in lan- 
guage, 149-151, 157-159, 164-166 ; 
impulse to it the immediate mo- 
a to language-making, 149, 283- 
287. 

community, its part in language- 
making, 149, 151. 

comparative method in linguistic 
science, 315. 

comparative philology, 315, 316. 

composition of words, its value as 
element in growth of language, 
121-130, 197-199. 

conjunctions, Indo-European, 209. 

consciousness, its different degrees 


INDEX. 


i language-making, 135-187, 147, 

48, 

conservative force in life of language, 
32, 33. 

constraint in language-learning, 22, 
23. 

control, 84. 

conventionality of words, 19, 283, 
288; conventional phraseology, 
113. 

copper, 78. 

Coptic language, 254. 

Cornish language, 183. 

correspondences, verbal, as signs of 
relationship, 169, 170. 

cost, 55. 

count, 55. 

crescent, 82-84, 

Croatian language, 182. 

culture, its effect in language-his- 
tory, 158, 176. 

Cymric languages, 183. 


-d, preterit sign, 42, 53. 

Dakota language, 259, 263. 

Danish language, 181. 

decimal system, its basis, 20. 

denominative verbs, 131, 132. 

derivation, 89. 

derivative endings, Indo-European, 
208. 

develop, 88. 

dialect and language, distinction of, 
177, 178. 

dialectic variation in language, 153- 
178. 

digamma, Greek, 72. 

disaster, 99. 

disciple, 40, 41. 

dissimilation, euphonie, 71. 

divarication, dialectic, law of, 163- 
166. . 

divine origin of language, 302, 303. 

do, 91. 

-dom, 123. 

double, 88. 

Dravidian family, 244, 245. 

duplicity, 88. 


cars, 88, 74, 75. 

ease or economy, tendency toward 
as element in phonetic history of 
language, 49-74; its constructive 
effect, 53; same -principle in 
change of meaning, 79. 

education and culture, their effect. 
on history of language, 158. 

Egyptian language, 254-256. 

electricity, 142. t 

English language, a mixed speech, 


INDEX. 


9, 100, 117-119; its periods, 33; 
its change from Anglo-Saxon il- 
lustrated, 86-48; its inconsist- 
ent vowel-system, 56 ; loss of old 
words and forms, 99-106 ; conver- 
sion of one part of speech into 
another, 132, 133. 

Esthonian language, 230. 

été, etc. (French), 54. 

Ethiopian languages, 256. 

Ethiopic or Geéz ar fonarsl 247. 

ethnology, bearing of language on, 
265-276. 

Etruscan language, 188, 275. 

etymology, foundation of linguistic 
science, 312, 313; its true methods, 
313-315. 

expression, various means of, 1, 2, 
282, 287; conversion of emotional 
into intellectual, 283-289 ; pre- 
dominance of voice, 291-294, 

extension of sphere of meaning of 
words, 84-96. 


families of language, 174, 228, 229, 
268, 

Jare, 38, 89, 52, 74, 75. 

Jemina and its derivatives, 167. 

figurative transfer of meaning, 86-89, 
112. 

final part of a word most liable to 
change, 71, 72. 

Finnish language, 280. 

Joot, 86, 300. : 

Jor, fore, 94, 129. 

foreign language, its acquisition, 23- 
25 


Jorge, 89. 

formal expression, objects and means 
of, 106, 213-227; its derivation 
from more material elements, 89- 
96; learned later than material 
expression by children, 13, 14. 

‘ formative elements, how obtained, 
122-130, 197 ; their uses, 129-181. 

oe and its derivatives, 167, 171. 

‘rench language, 9,183. | 
fricative sounds, 61, 64, 65. 
Frisian language, 181. 


Gadhelic languages, 183. 

Gaelic language, 183. 

Galla language, 256. 

galvanism, 142. 

gas, 17, 120. 

gazette, V7. 

Geéz language, 247. 

gender in language, 215, 216; in In- 
do-European, 59, 206, 207; loss in 
English, 104, 


323 


genetic classification, its value, 277, 

genius of a language, 150. 

genteel, gentile, gentle, 129. 

Georgian language, 245. 

German language, 181; its history, 
160-162. 

German linguistic scholars, 317-819. 

Germanic languages, 181. 

gesture as means of expression, 292. 

go, 101. 

good, 12, 111. 

Greek language, 184, 185. 

green, 14-17, 83, 86, 138. 

Grimm’s Law of rotation of mutes, 
57, 58, 73. 3 

growth of language, 343; its modes 
and processes, 45-152. 


Hamitic family, 254-256. 

harmonic sequence of vowels in Scy- 
thian, 71, 234. 

have, 91-98. 

head, 86, 87. 

Hebrew language, 246, 247. 

High-German languages, 181. 

Himalayan languages, 240. 

Himyaritic language, 247. 

Hindi language, 187. 

Hindustani language, 187. 

Hottentot language, 257. 

human race, its antiquity, 192; its 
unity or variety not demonstrable 
by language, 268-270. 

Hungarian language, 230. 

Huzvaresh language, 185. 


Icelandic language, 181. 

ideas antecedent to their names, 137- 
140. 

imitative principle in language-mak- 
ing, 120, 282, 294-298, 

imply, 88. 

amportant, 88. 

Indian, 78. 

Indian (Asiatic) languages, 186, 187. 

individual action on language, 144- 
161, 153, 163; individual varieties 
of language, 154-156. 

Indo-European family, its establish- 
ment, 167-174; its branches, 180- 
188; importance, 188-191; time 
and place of unity unknown, 192- 
194; history of its structural de- 
velopment, 194-212. 

influence, 99, 102. 

inner form of language, 22. 

inorganic means of formal distine- 
tion, 127. 

inoseulation, 137. 

instincts in man, 289, 290. 


324 


institutions composing culture, lan- 
guage one of them, 280, 281, 34. 

intellectual and moral terms derived 
from physical, 88, 89. 

interjections, 209, 210. 

internal change of vowel in Indo- 
European, its origin, 125-128. 

invention of new words, 120. 

invest, 88. 

Iranian languages, 185, 186. 

Irish language, 183. 

Trish pronunciation of English, 156. 

Iroquois language, 259, 263. 

4s being, 102, 151. 

Italian language, 184. 

Italic languages, 183. 

ats, 75, 151. 


Japanese language, 117, 240, 241. 
jovial, 81. 
Julius, July, 135. 


Kalevala, 230. 

Kirghiz language, 231. 
knight, 40. 

Kurdish language, 186. 


language, double sense of the 
term, 278-280; nature of language, 
1, 2, 80, 280, 282, 304; universality 
as possession of man, 2, 281; lim- 
ited to man, 2, 3, 281; why thus 
limited, 305; its discordance, 3; 
its acquisition by speakers, 7-30 ; 
conservative and alterative forces 
in its life and growth, 32-343 pro- 
cesses of its constant growth or 
change, 34-152; forces producing 
this, 144-151; dialectic variation, 
153-178 ; relationships and classifi- 
cation of languages, 169-175; the 
known families of language, 179- 
212, 228-264; linguistic structure, 
213-227; bearing of language on 
ethnology, 265-277; historical be- 
ginnings of language, 199-202, 
226,227, 298, 299; their origin, 
278-309 ; the science of language, 
310-319. 

Lappish language, 230. 

Latin language, 183,184; its history, 
ne 163; borrowing from it, 116, 
117. 

laws of language, their true charac- 
ter, 146. 

learned dialects, 159. 

-less, 122. 

Lettish language, 182. 

Libyan or Berber language, 256. 

life of language, 32-34. 


INDEX. 


linguistic science, or science of lan- 
guage, its problems, 4, 15, 163; its 
character and method, 5, 191, 310- 
315; difference of its material 
from that of physical science, 266, 
267; its history, 5, 317-319; its 
relation to Indo-European study, 
189-191. 

Lithuanian language, 182. 

Livonian language, 182. 

loss of material from language, 50- 
53, 98-107. 

Low-German languages, 181. 

lunatic, 78. 

-ly, 41, 52, 122. 


magenta, 16, 138. 

magnetism, 142. 

Mahratti language, 187. 

Malay-Polynesian family, 241-243. 

Malayalam or Malabar language, 
244, 

Malayan languages, 242. 

man, men, 127. 

man, universal and sole possessor 
of language, 2, 8, 281, 282, 303- 
305; his development by means ° 
of language, 306, 3807; question 
of his antiquity, 192. 

Manchu language, 236, 237. 

material and form in language, 213- 
227 ; material expression reduced 
to formal, 89-96. 

Maya language, 263. 

Melanesian languages, 242. 

-ment (French), 122, 123. 

mental training and shaping in ac- 
quisition of language, 19-23. 

Mercury, mercurial, 80, 81. 

metaphor, 88. 

methinks, 42. 

miraculous theory of language, 302, 
303. 

mixture of race and language, 9, ~ 
271, 272. 

Moabite language, 247. 

modification of vowel (umlaut) 
Germanic language, 71, 127, 151. 

Mceso-Gothic language, 181. 

Mongolian language, 235-237. 

monosyllabic family, 237-240. 

month, 81. 

moon, 80-83. 

Moravian language, 182. 

Mordwinian language, 230. 

ee eepry th question of a science 
of, 144. 


mulier and its derivatives, 167. 
musket, 100. : 
Muskokee languages, 263, 


INDEX. 


muslin, 78. 
mute consonants, 61-63. 


name-making process, as part of the 
growth of Tanguage, 134-151, 307. 

nasal mutes, 63. 

Netherlandish language, 181. 

Norwegian language, 181. 

noun-inflection in Indo-European, 
205-207. 


obsolescent material in language, 
101-108. 

obvious, 89, 

occur, 89. 

of, off, 94, 129, 188. 

Old Bactrian language, 185. 

Old Persian language, 185. 

Old Prussian language, 182. 

Old Saxon language, 181. 

one, 129. 

onomatopeeia, its part in language- 
making, 120, 282, 294-298, 

origin of language, 278-309. 

Oscan language, 184. 

Osmanli Purkish Janguage, 231. 

Ossetic language, 186. 

Ostiak language, 230, 

Otomi language, 262. 


Pali language, 187. 
aper, 77. 
apuan family, 243, 244, 
at of speech in Indo-European, 209. 
ehlevi language, 185, 
erplex, 88. 
ersian language, 185, 186; its bor- 
rowing and lending, 117. 
Pheenician language, 246, 247. 
phonetic. change in the growth of 
language, 49, 73; limit to its expla- 
nation, 73, 74. 
physical science, analogy of linguis- 
tic science with it, 311, 312. 
pine-apple, 115. 
planet, 79, 88. 
lead, 75. 
olabian language, 182, 
Polish language, 182. 
Polynesian languages, 242. 
olysynthetie structure, 258-262. 
brmetogs language, 184, 
position as means of formal distine- 
tion, 221. 
ost, 84. 
rakrit language, 187. 
preach, 55. 
prepositions in Indo-European, 94, 
208, 209. 
priest, 77. 


3295 


pronominal roots and pronouns in 
Indo-European, 201, 207. 

proper names, 79, 80. 

proven, 5. - 

Provencal language, 184. 

psychology, its part in connection - 
with the study of language, 10, 15, 
308, 804. 


queen, guean, 168. 
Quichua language, 263, 264. 


race and language, their relations, 8, 
9, 271-276. 

read, réad, 126. 

reason, relation of language to, 304, 
305. 

relation, 88. 

relative pronouns, 95. 

Rheeto-Romanic language, 184. 

right, 89. 

rise, 109. 

roll, role, 84. 

Romaic or Modern Greek laneuage, 
185. 

Romanic languages, 183; their his- 
tory, 162, 163, 166. 

roots of Indo-European language, 199, 
202; of other languages, 226, 227: of 
Semitic, 248 3; their value, 298, 299. 

Rumansh language, 184. 

Russian language, 182. 


sabbath, 40, 41. 

Samoyed languages, 230. 

Sanskrit language, 186, 187, 117. 

saturnine, 81. 

savior, 40, 41. 

Scandinavian languages, 181. 

science of language—see linguistic 
science. 

Scythian family, 230-287 ; its branch- 
es, 230, 231 5 its structure, 232-234; 
its doubtful members, 235-237, 244, 
245. 

Semitic family, 246-254 ; its locality 
and branches, 246, 247; structure, 
248-251; question of the origin 
of this, 251-253; of relationship 
with other languages, 253, 254. 

semivowels, 65, 66. 

Servian language, 182. 

sex as ground of formal distinction 
in language, 215, 216. 

shall, 93. 

-ship, 123. 

Siamese language, 239. 

sibilants, 64, 

silent letters, 55. 

simple, simplicity, 88. 


326 


Skipetar language, 187. 

slang, 112, 118. 

Slavonic languages, 182. 

Slovakian language, 182. 

Slovenian language, 182. 

-someé, 123. 

sonant and surd, distinction of, 63; 
their interchanges, 70, 71. 

sooth, 41, 43. 

Sorbian language, 182. 

South-African family, 256, 257. . 

Spanish language, 184. 

specialization of meaning in growth 
of language, 82-84. 

spirants, 65. 

spiritus, 137. 

structure in language, 213-227. 

such, 55. 

suffixes, how made, 122-130. 

suggest, 89. 

sun, 80, 81, 83. 

surd and sonant, distinction of, 63. 

Swedish language, 181. 

synthetic and analytic structure, 211, 
212. 

Syrian language, 246, 247. 


tabu, 115. 

take place, 96. 

Tamil language, 244. 

Tartar or Tatar languages, 230, 231. 
Telugu language, 244. 

there is, 96. 

thorough, through, 129. 

Tibetan language, 240. 

time in verbal expression, 219, 220. 
to, 43, 94, 138. 

tragedy, tragic, 142. 

transfer, 88. 

trivial, 88. 

Tungusic language, 235, 237. 
Tupi-Guarani languages, 262, 264. 
Turanian languages, 231. 

Turkish languages, 230, 231, 117. 
Turkoman language, 281. 


Ugrian languages, 230. 

Uigur language, 231. 
Umbrian language, 184. 
Ural-Altaic family, 231. 
Urdu language, 187. 

usage the law of speech, 141. 
Usbek language, 231. 

utter, 129. 


THE 


INDEX. 


variation of radical vowel (ablaut), 
128. 

verb, Indo-European, 202-205; Sey- 
thian, 233; Semitic, 248-250; 
American, 260; verbal structure, 
218-221; making of verbs from 
nouns and adjectives, 1381, 132. 

vocabulary, different extent of, in in- 
dividuals and classes, 25, 26. 

voice as means of expression, 287, 
289, 291-294. 

volume, 77. 

vowels, 61, 65, 66; relation of vow- 
el and consonant, 68; chaotic con- 
dition of English vowel system, 
55, 56. 


Wallachian language, 184. 

was, were, 90. 

Wednesday, 81. 

Welsh language, 183. 

which, 55. 

wife and its kin, 168. 

will, 93. 

Wogul language, 230. 

words, are arbitrary and convention- 
al signs for ideas, 19, 283, 288; 
connected with meaning by amen- 
tal association only, 11, 18, 48; 
this how established, 26-30; char- 
acter of the etymological reason, 
143 ; are not definitions or descrip- 
tions, 47,48; have each its own 
time, place, occasion, 16, 17, 40, 
47; are class-names, 78; change 
form and meaning separately, 49 ; 
changes of form, 45-75 ; changes of 
meaning, 76-97 ; figurative change, 
86-89; attenuation, 90-95; change 
of pregnancy or dignity, 97, 1135 
variety of meanings, 110, 111; loss 
of words from a language, 98-102; 
additions of new words, 108-133 5 
principles governing addition, 134- 
152. ; 


wot, 93. 


Wotiak language, 230, 
wrong, 89. 


Yakut language, 231. 


Zend language, 185. 
Ziryanian language, 2389, 


International Scientific Sertes. 


D. AppLeTon & Co. have the pleasure of announcing that they have made arranges 
ments for publishing, and have recently commenced the issue of, a SERIES OF PopuLAR 
Monocrapus, or small works, under the above title, which will embody the results of 
recent inquiry in the most interesting departments of advancing science. 

The character and scope of this series will be best indicated by a reference to the 
names and subjects included in the subjoined list, from which it will be seen that the 
cooperation of the most distinguished professors in England, Germany, France, and the 
United States, has keen secured, and negotiations are pending for contributions from 


other eminent scientific writers. 


The works will be issued in New York, London, Paris, Leipsic, Milan, and St. 


Petersburg. 


‘Lhe INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES is entirely an American project, and was 
originated and organized by Dr. E. L. Youmans, who spent the greater part of a year 


in Europe, arranging with authors and publishers. 


follows: 
Prof. Lommer (University of Erlangen), 
Optics. (In press.) 


Rev. M. J. Berxetey, M.A., F.L.S., 
and M. Cooxr, M. A., LL. D., 
fungi; thetr Nature, Influences, 
and Uses. (In press.) 

Prof. W. Kincpon Cuirrorp, M. A., The 
First Principles of the Exact Sciences 
explained to the non-mathematical. 

Prof. I. H. Huxiey, LL. D., F.R.S., 
Bodily Motion and Consciousness. 

Dr. W. B. Carpenter, LL. D., F.R.S., 
The Physical Geography of the Sea. 

Prof. WILLIAM OpLonG, F. R. S., The Old 
Chemistry viewed from the New 
Standpornt. 

W. Lauper Linpsay, M. D., F. R.S.E., 
Mind in the Lower Animals. 

Sir Joun Lussock, Bart., F.R.S., The 


Antiquity of Man. 

Prof. W. T. ‘THisetton Dyer, B. A., 
B.Sc., Form and Habit in Flower- 
zug Plants. 

Mr. J. N. Lockyer, F.R.S., Spectrum 
Analysis. 


Prof. MicuaeL Fostrr, M. D., Proto- 
plasm and the Cell Theory. 

Prof. W. STANLEY Jevons, Money: and 
the Mechanism of Exchange. 
H. Cuarrtron Bastian, M. D., F.R.S., 
The Brain as an Organ of Mind. 
Prof. A. C. Ramsay, LL. D., F.R. S., 
Earth Sculpture: Hills, Valleys, 
Mountains, Plains, Rivers, Lakes; 
how they were produced, and how 
they have been destroyed. 

Prof. RupoLpxH Vircuow (Berlin a Pea 
sity), Morbid Physiological Action. 

Prof. CLaupE BERNARD, Physical and 
Metaphysical Phenomena of Life, 

Prof. H. Samnte-CiLarre Devitt, Ax 
Introduction to General Chemistry. 

Prof. Wurtz, Atoms and the Atomic 
Theory. 

Prof. De Quatreracrs, The Negro 
Races. 


The forthcoming volumes are as 


Prof. Lacaze-Dutuigrs, Zoology since - 
Cuvier. 

Prof. BERTHELOT, Chesmical Synthesis. 

Prof. J. RoseNnTHAL, General Physiology 
of Muscles and Nerves. 

Prof. JAMEs D. Dana, M.A., LL. D., Ox 
Cephalization , or, Head-Characters 
in the Gradation and Progress of 
Life. 

Prof. S. W. Jounson, M. A., On the Nu- 
trition of Plants. 

Prof. Austin Fuint, Jr., M. D., The 
Nervous System and tts Relation to 
the Bodily Functions. 

Prof. W. D. Wuitney, Modern Linguis- 
tic Science, 

Prof. C. A. Youne, Ph. D. (of Dartmouth 
College), The Suz. 

Prof. BerNnstEIN (University of Halle), 
Physiology of the Senses. 

Prof. FErpinAND Coun (Breslau Univer- 
sity), Thallophytes (Algee, Lichens, 
Fung). 

Prof. HERMANN (University of Zurich), 
Respiration. 

Prof. Leuckart (University of Leipsic), 
Outlines of Animal Organization. 

Prof. LizpreicH (University of Berlin), 
Outlines of Toxicology. 

Prof. Kunpt (University of Strasburg), 
On Sound. 

Prof. Rees (University of Erlangen), On. 
Parasitic Plants. 

Prof. SrEINTHAL (University of Berlin), 
Outlines of the Science of Language. 

E, ALGLave (Professor of Constitutional 
and Administrative Law at Douai, and 
of Political Economy at Lille), Zhe 
Primitive Elements of Political Con- 
stitutions. 

P. Lorarn (Professor of Medicine, Paris), 
Modern Epidemics. 

Prof. ScutirzenBeRGER (Director of the 
Chemical Laboratory at the Sorbonne), 
On Fermentations, 

Mons, Depray, Precious Metals. 


Opinions of the Presson the “International Scientific Series.” 


Tyndall's Forms of Water. 


I yvol., :12mo. ...Cloth.- Illustrated... 3°» = Ie 8 wea iee 050. 


‘<TIn the volume now published, Professor Tyndall has presented a noble illustration 
of the acuteness and subtlety of his intellectual powers, the scope and insight of his 
scientific vision, his singular command of the appropriate language of exposition, and 
the peculiar vivacity and grace with which he unfolds the results of intricate scientific 
research.”’—WV. Y. Tribune. 5 

“The ‘Forms of Water,’ by Professor Tyndall, is an interesting and instructive 
little volume, admirably printed and illustrated. Prepared expressly for this series, it 
is in some measure a guarantee of the excellence of the volumes that will follow, and an 
indication that the publishers will spare no pains to include in the series the freshest in- 
vestigations of the best scientific minds.” —Boston Fournal. 

‘‘This series is admirably commenced by this little volume from the pen of Prof. 
Tyndall. A perfect master of his subject, he presents in a style easy and attractive his 
methods of investigation, and the results obtained, and gives to the reader a clear con- 
ception of all the wondrous transformations to which water is subjected.” —Churchman. 


II 


Bagehot’s Physics and Politics. 


I vol., 1zmo. Price, $1.50. 


‘¢ Tf the ‘ International Scientific Series’ proceeds as it has beggin, it will more than 
fulfil the promise given to the reading public in its prospectus. ‘The first volume, by 
Professor Tyndall, was a model of lucid and attractive scientific exposition; and now 
we have a second, by Mr. Walter Bagehot, which is not only very lucid and charming, 
but also original and suggestive in the highest degree. WWXvhere since the publication 
of Sir Henry Maine’s ‘Ancient Law,’ have we seen so many fruitful thoughts sug- 
gested in the course of a couple of hundred pages. . . - To do justice to Mr. Bage- 
hot’s fertile book, would require a long article, With the best of intentions, we are 
conscious of having given but a sorry account of it in these brief paragraphs. But we 
hope we have said enough to commend it to the attention of the thoughtful reader.” — 
Prof. JoHN Fiske, in the Atlantic Monthly. 

‘‘Mr, Bagehot’s style is clear and vigorous. We refrain from giving a fuller ac- 
count of these suggestive essays, only because we are sure that our readers will find it 
worth their while to peruse the book for themselves; and we sincerely hope that the 
forthcoming parts of the ‘International Scientific Series’ will be as interesting.” — 
Atheneum. 

‘‘Mr. Bagehot discusses an immense variety of topics connected with the progress 
bf societies and nations, and the development of their distinctive peculiarities; and his 
book shows an abundance of ingenious and original thought.”—ALFRED RussELL 
Wattace, in Nature. . ; 


D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y- 


Opinions of the Press on the “ International Scientific Series.” 


DEE: 
Foods. 


By Dr. EDWARD SMITH. 
rvol.,12mo. Cloth, Illustrated. . . . . . . . Price, $1.75. 


In making up THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES, Dr. Edward Smith was se- 
lected as the ablest man in England to treat the important subject of Foods. His services . 
were secured for the undertaking, and the little treatise he has produced shows that the 
choice of a writer on this subject was most fortunate, as the book is unquestionably the 
clearest and best-digested compend of the Science of Foods that has appeared in our 
language. 

** The book contains a series of diagrams, displaying the effects of sleep and meals 
on pulsation and respiration, and of various kinds of food on respiration, which, as the 
results of Dr: Smith’s own experiments, possess a very high value. We have not far 
to go in this work for occasions of favorable criticism ; they occur throughout, but are 


perhaps most apparent in those parts of the subject with which Dr. Smith’s name is es- 
pecially linked.”—Loxdon Examiner. 


“‘ The union of scientific and popular treatment in the composition of this work will 
afford an attraction to many readers who would have been indifferent to purely theoreti. 
cal details... Still his work abounds in information, much of which is of great value, 
and a part of which could not easily be obtained from other sources. Its interest is de. 
cidedly enhanced for students who demand _ both clearness and exactness of statement, 
by the profusion of well-executed woodcuts, diagrams, and tables, which accompany the 
volume... . The suggestions of the author on the use of tea and coffee, and of the va.- 
rious forms of alcohol, although perhaps not strictly of a novel character, are highly in- 
structive, and form an interesting portion of the volume.”—W. V. Zridune. 


IV. 
_ Body and Mind. 
LHE "TFHEORIES OF THEIR- RELATION: 
By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D. 
WPM BLOM Osan GION ss vars ete wees ae el oot Pricer elena 


ProFEssor BAIN is the author of two well-known standard works upon the Science 
»f Mind—‘‘ The Senses and the Intellect,’’ and ‘‘The Emotions and the Will.” He is 
one of the highest liviag authorities in the school which holds that there can be no sound 
or valid psychology unless the mind and the body are studied, as they exist, together. 


“Tt contains a forcible statement of the connection between mind and body, study- 
ing their subtile interworkings by the light of the most recent physiological investiga- 
tions. The summary in Chapter V., of the investigations of Dr. Lionel Beale of the 
embodiment of the intellectual functions in the cerebral system, will be found the 
freshest and most interesting part of his book. Prof. Bain’s own theory of the connec- 
tion between the mental and the bodily part in man is stated by himself to be as follows: 
There is ‘one substance, with two sets of properties, two sides, the physical and the 
mental—a double-faced unity.’ While, in the strongest manner, asserting the union 
of mind with brain, he yet denies ‘the asscciation of union 7x place,’ but asserts the 
urion of close succession in time,’ holding that ‘the same being is, by alternate fits, un- 
der extended and under unextended consciousness.” ’—Christian Register. 


D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 


Opinions of the Press on the “International Scientific Series.” 


The Study op Sociology. 


By HERBERT SPENCER. 
Fevol;.t2mo. ‘Cloth. cas vv\.y a eo itt, es ea ee ae $1.50. 


“The philosopher whose distinguished name gives weight and influence to this vol- 
ume, has given in its pages some of the finest specimens of reasoning in all its forms 
and departments. ‘There is a fascination in his array of facts, incidents, and opinions, 
which draws on the reader to ascertain his conclusions. Thé coolness and calmness of 
his treatment of acknowledged difficulties and grave objections to his theories win for 
him a close attention and sustained effort, on the part of the reader, to comprehend, fol- 
low, grasp, and appropriate his principles. ‘This book, independently of its bearing 
upon sociology, is valuable as lucidly showing what those essential characteristics are 
which entitle any arrangement and connection of facts and deductions to be called a 
science,” —Episcopalian. 

‘ This work compels admiration by the evidence which it gives of immense re- 
search, study, and observation, and is, withal, written in a popular and very pleasing 
style. It is a fascinating work, as well as one of deep practical thought.’’—ZBost. Post. 


“‘ Herbert Spencer is unquestionably the foremost living thinker in the psychological 
and sociological fields, and this volume is an important contribution to the science of 
which it treats. . . . It will prove more popular than any of its author’s other creations, 
for it is more plainly addressed to the people and has a more practical and less specu- 
lative cast. It will require thought, but it is well worth thinking about.” —A dbany 
Evening Fournal. 


Huhe New: Chemisty. 


By JOSIAH P. COOKE, Jr., : 
Erving Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard University. 


Iovol., a2mo.° (Cloth. Sony os, ee aa nae een) Seen 


** The book of Prof. Cooke is a model of the modern popular science work. It has 
just the due proportion of fact; philosophy, and true romance, to make it a fascinating 
companion, either for the voyage or the study.”,—Dazily Graphic. 


“This admirable monograph, by the distinguished Erving Professor of Chemistry 
in Harvard University, is the first American contribution to ‘The International Scien- 
tific Séries,’ and a more attractive piece of work in the way of popular exposition upon 
a difficult subject has not appeared in a long time. It not only well sustains the char- 
acter of the volumes with which it is associated, but its reproduction in European coun- 
tries will be an honor to American science.’”—New York Tribune. 


** All the chemists in the country will enjoy its perusal. and many will seize upon it 
as a thing longed for. For, to those ‘advanced students who have kept well abreast of 
the chemical tide, it offers a calm philosophy. To those others, youngest of the class, 
who have emerged from the schools since new methods have prevailed, it presents a 
generalization, drawing to its use all the data, the relations of which the newly-fledged 
fact-seeker may but dimly perceive without its aid... . To the old chemists, Prof. 
Cooke’s treatise is like a message from beyond the mountain. They have heard of 
changes in the science; the clash of the battle of old and new theories has stirred them 
from afar. ‘The tidings, too, had come that the old had given way; and little more than 
this they knew. . . . Prof. Cooke’s ‘ New Chemistry’ must do wide service in bringing 
to close sight the little known and.the longed for. . . . As a philosophy it is elemen. 
tary, but, as a book of science, ordinary readers will find it sufficiently advanced.””— 
Utica Morning Herald. 


D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 


fad. 


Opinions of the Press on the “International Scientific Series.” 


Vil. 


The Conservation of Energy. 
By BALFOUR STEWART VLE Dy Poked. 
With an Appendix treating of the Vital and Mental Applications of the Doctrine. 
I vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 


‘* The author has succeeded in presenting the facts in a clear and satisfactory manner, 
using simple language and copious illustration in the presentation of facts and prin- 
ciples, confining himself, however, to the physical aspect of the subject. In the Ap- 
pendix the operation of the principles in the spheres of life and mind is supplied by 
the essays of Professors Le Conte and Bain.”’—Ofio Farmer. 


“* Prof. Stewart is one of the best known teachers in Owens College in Manchester. 

“*The volume of THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES now before us is an ex- 
cellent illustration of the true method of teaching, and will well compare with Prof. 
Tyndali’s charming little book in the same series on ‘ Forms of Water,” with illustra- 
tions encugh to make clear, but not to conceal his thoughts, in a style simple and 
brief.’—Christian Register, Boston. * 

‘The writer has wonderful ability to compress much information into a few words. 
It is a rich treat to read such a book as this, when there is so much beauty and force 
combined with such simplicity. —Lastern Press. 


VIII. 


Animal Locomotion; 
Or, WALKING, SWIMMING, AND FLYING. 


' With a Dissertation on Aéronautics. 


By J., BELL. PETTIGREW, M.D., F RUS. Fy ReS.E., 
Be Rea Pos 


EVOL pT2M 0.535 a) son's Teese PEC; PIs yee 


‘‘This work is more than a contribution to the stock of entertaining knowledge, 
though, if it only pleased, that would be sufficient excuse for its publication. But Dr. 
Pettigrew has given his time to these investigations with the ultimate purpose of solv- 
ing the difficult problem of Aéronautics. ‘To this he devotes the last fifty pages of his 
book. Dr. Pettigrew is confident that man will yet conquer thé domain of the air.”— 
N.Y. Fournal of Commerce. : 


**Most persons claim to know how to walk, but few could explain the mechanical 
principles involved in this most ordinary transaction, and will be surprised that the 
movements of bipeds and quadrupeds, the darting and rushing motion of fish, and the 
erratic flight_of the denizens of the air, are not only anologous, but can be reduced to 
similar formula. ‘The work is profusely illustrated, and, without reference to the theory 
it is designed to expound, will be regarded as a valuable addition to natural history.” 
—Omaha Republic. 


D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 


Opinions of the Press on the “International Scientific Series.” 


Responsibility in Mental Disease. 


By HENRY MAUDSLEY, M. D., 


Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; Professor of Medical Jurisprudence 
in University College, London. 


1 Vol, t2mo. 4 Cloth. os iemee Fices ob? .5 0, 


‘*Having lectured in a medical college on Mental Disease, this book has been a 
feast to us. It handles a great subject in a masterly manner, and, in our judgment, the 

ioe - »” 
positions taken by the author are correct and well sustained.”’—Pastor and People. 

‘*The author is at home in his subject, and presents his views in an almost singu- 
larly clear and satisfactory manner. . . . The volume is a valuable contribution to one 
of the most difficult, and at the same time one of the most important subjects of inves- 
tigation at the present day.” —W. Y. Observer. 

“It is a work profound and searching, and abounds in wisdom.” —Pittsburg Com- 
mercial, 


_ ‘Handles the important topic with masterly power, and its suggestions are prac- 
tical and of great value.” —Providence Press. 


The Saenee of Law. 


By SHELDON AMOS, M.A., 


Professor of Jurisprudence in University College, London; author of ‘* A Systematic 
View of the Science of Jurisprudence,” ‘* An English Code, its Difficulties 
and the Modes of overcoming them,” etc., etc. 


z yol., remo. Cloth. 9 > 4.24 s'Price, ‘Sri fs; 


‘The valuable series of ‘International Scientific’? works, prepared by eminent spe- 
cialists, with the intention of popularizing information in their several branches of 
knowledge, has received a good accession in this compact and thoughtful volume. It 
is a difficult task to give the outlines of a complete theory of law in a portable volume, 
which he who runs may read, and probably Professor Amos himself would be the last 
to claim that he has perfectly succeeded in doing this. But he has certainly done much 
to clear the science of law from the technical obscurities which darken it to minds which 
have had no legal training, and to make clear to his ‘lay’ readers in how true and high a 
sense it can assert its right to be considered a science, and not a mere practice.” —7hé 
Christian Register. 

“The works of Bentham and Austin are abstruse and philosophical, and Maine’s 
require hard study and a certain amount of special training. The writers also pursue 
different lines of investigation, and can only be regarded as comprehensive in the de- 
partments they confined themselves to. It was left to Amos to gather up the result 
and present the science in its fullness. The unquestionable merits of this, his last book, 
are, that it contains a complete treatment of a subject which has hitherto heen handled 
by specialists, and it opens up that subject to every inquiring mind. . . . To do justice 
to ‘ The Science of Law’ would require a longer review than we have space for. We 
have read no more interesting and instructive book for some time. Its themes concern 
every one who renders obedience to laws, and who would have those laws the best 
possible. The tide of legal reform which set in fifty years ago has to sweep yet higher 
if the flaws in our jurisprudence are to be removed. ‘The process of change cannot be 
better guided than by a well-informed public mind, and Prof. Amos has done great 
service in materially helping to promote this end.”—Buffalo Courier. 


D. APPLETON & CO., PusrisneErs, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 


Opinions of the Press on the *‘ International Scientific Series.” 


. XI, 


Animal Mechanism, 


A Treatise on Terrestrial and Aérial Locomotion. 
° By Eo Ji MAREY, 
Professor at the College of France, and Member of the Academy of Medicine. 
With 117 Illustrations, drawn and engraved under the direction of the author. 
£ Vol t2mo.F Clothare ce. <cn ceca ECC Ot: 75 


‘We hope that, in the short glance which we have taken of some of the most im- 
portant points discussed in the work before us, we have succeeded in interesting our 
readers sufficiently in its contents to make them curious to learn more of its subject- 
matter. We cordially recommend it to their attention. 

**The author of the present work, it is well known, stands at the head of those 
physiologists who have investigated the mechanism of animal dynamics—indeed, we 
may almost say that he has made the subject his own. By the originality of his con- 
ceptions, the ingenuity of his constructions, the skill of his analysis, and the persever- 
ance of his investigations, he has surpassed all others in the power of unveiling the 
complex and intricate movements of animated beings.” —Popzlar Science Monthly. 


History of the Conflict between 


Religion and Science. 


By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL. D., 
Author of ‘* The Intellectual Development of Europe.” 
t vol., r2mo. s : : S : 2 5 : Price, $1.75. 


«This little ‘ History” would have been a valuable contribution to literature at any 
ime, and is, in fact, an admirable text-book upon a subject that is at present engross- 
ing the attention of a large number of the most serious-minded people, and it is no 
small compliment to the sagacity of its distinguished author that he has so well gauged 
the requirements of the times, and so adequately met them by the preparation of this 
volume. It remains to be added that, while the writer has flinched from no responsi- 
bility in his statements, and has written with entire fidelity to the demands of truth 
and justice, there is not a word in his book that can give offense to candid’and fair- 
minded readers.” —WV. Y. Evening Post. 

‘* The key-note to this volume is found in the antagonism between the progressive 
tendencies of the human mind and the pretensions of ecclesiastical authority, as devel- 
oped in the history of modern science. No previous writer has treated the subject 
from this point of view, and the present monograph will be found to possess no less 
originality of conception than vigor of reasoning and wealth of erudition. .. . The 
method of Dr. Draper, in his treatment of the various questions that come up for dis- 
cussion, 1s marked by singular impartiality as well as consummate ability. Through- 
out his work he maintains the position of an historian, not of an advoc-te. His tone is 
tranquil and serene, as becomes the search after truth, with no trace of the impassioned 
ardor of controversy. He endeavors so far to identify himself with the contending 
parties as to gain a clear comprehension of their motives, but, at the same time, he 
submits their actions to the tests of a cool and impartial examination.” —V. VY. Tribune. 


D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 


RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 


THE NATIVE RACES OF THE PACIFIC STATES. 


By HERBERT H. BANCROFT. ‘To be completed in § vols. Vol. I. now 
ready. Containing Wild Tribes: their Manners and Customs. 
1 vol., 8vo. Cloth, $6; sheep, $7. 


‘* We can only say that if the remaining volumes are executed in the same spirit ot 
candid and careful investigation, the same untiring industry, and intelligent good sense, 
which mark the volume before us, Mr. Bancroft’s ‘ Native Races of the Pacific States 
will form, as regards aboriginal: America, an encyclopedia of knowledge not only un 
equaled but unapproached. A literary enterprise more deserving of a generous sym- 
pathy and support has never been undertaken on this side of the Atlantic.’ "—FRANCIS 
PARKMAN, in the Vorth American Review. 

‘‘ The industry, sound judgment, and the excellent literary style displayed in this 
work, cannot be too highly praised.” —Bostox Host. 


A BRIEF HISTORY OF CULTURE. 
By JouN S. HITTELL. I vol., 12mo. Price, $1.50. 


‘* He writes in a popular style for popular use. He takes ground which has never 
been fully occupied before, although the general subject has been treated more or less 
distinctly by several writers. . . . Mr. Hittell’s method is compact, embrgcing a wide 
field in a few words, often presenting a mere hint, when a fuller treatment is craved by 
the reader; but, although his book cannot be commended as a model of literary art, it 
may be consulted to great advantage by every lover of free thought and novel sugges- 
tions.’—WV. VY. Tribune. ‘ 


THE HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RE- 
LIGION AND SCIENCE. 


By JoHN W. DRAPER, M. D., author of ‘‘The Intellectual Develop- 
ment of Europe.” _I vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.75. 


‘©The conflict of which he treats has been a ighity tragedy of humanity that has 
dragged nations into its vortex and involved the fate of empires. The work, though 
small, is full of instruction regarding the rise of the great ideas of science and philos- 
ophy; and he describes inan impressive manner and with dramatic effect the way re- 
ligious authority has employed the secular power to obstruct the progress of knowledge 
and crush out the spirit of investigation. While there is not in his book a word of dis- 
respect for things sacred, he writes with a directness of speech, and a vividness of char- 
acterization and an unflinching fidelity to the facts, which show him to be in thorough 
earnest with his work. ‘The ‘ History of the Conflict between Religion and Science’ 
is a fitting sequel to the ‘ History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,’ and will 
add to its author’s already high reputation as a philosophic historian.”—W. FY. Tribune. 


THEOLOGY IN THE ENGLISH POETS. 
COWPER, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH, and BURNS. By 
Rev. STOPFORD BROOKE. -I vol., 12mo. Price, $2. 


‘* Apart from its literary merits, the book may be said to possess an independent 
value, as tending to familiarize a certain section of the English public with more en- 
lightened views of theology.” —London A theneun. 


BLOOMER’S COMMERCIAL CRYPTOGRAPH. 
A Telegraph Code and Double Index—Holocryptic Cipher. By J. G. 
BLoOoMER. 1 vol., 8vo. Price, $5. 


By the use of this work, business communications of whatever nature may be tele 
graphed with secrecy and economy. 


D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, New York. 


RECENT PUBLICATIONS.—scientiFic 


THE PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY. With their Ap- 


plications to the Training and Discipline of the Mind, and the Study of its 
Morbid Conditions. By W. B. Carpenter, F.R.S., etc. Illustrated. r2mo. 
737 pages. Price, $3.00. 


“The work is probably the ablest exposition of the subject which has been given to the world, and goes 
fir to establish a new system of Mental Philosophy, upon a much broader and more substantial basis than 
it has heretofore stood.?’—S¢. Louis Democrat. 

‘* Let us add that nothing we have said, or in any limited space could say, would give an adequate con- 
ception of the valuable and curious collection of facts bearing on morbid mental conditions, the learned 
physiological exposition, and the treasure-house of useful hints for mental rene which make this large 
and yet very amusing, as well as instructive book, an encyclopedia of well-classified and often very 
siartling psychoiogical experiences.”—London Spectaior. 


THE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN. 4 Series of Essays on the Wonders of 
the Firmament. By R. A. Procror, B. A. 


“A very charming work; cannot fail to lift the reader’s mind up ‘ through Nature’s work to Nature’s 
God.’ ”’?—London Standard. 

“Prof. R. A. Proctor is one of the very few rhetorical scientists who have the art of making science 
popular without making it or themselves contemptible. It will be hard to find anywhere else so much 
skill in effective expression, combined with so much genuine astronomical learning, as is to be seen in his 
new volume.”’—Christian Union. 


PHYSIOLOGY FOR PRACTICAL USE. By various Writers. Edited 
by James Hinton. With 50 Illustrations. x vol., r2mo. Price, $2.25. 


“This book is one of rare value, and will prove useful to a large class in the community. Its chief 
recommendation is in its applying the laws of the science of physiology to cases of the deraaged ox diseased 
operations of the organs or processes of the human system. It is as thoroughly practical as is a book of 
formulas of medicine, and the style in which the information is given is so entirely devoid of the mystification 
of technical or scientific terms that the most simple can easily comprehend it.””— Boston Gazette. 

“Of all the works upon health of a popular ereciey which we have met with for some time, and we 
are glad to think that this most important branch of knowledge is becoming more enlarged every day, 
the work before us appears to be the simplest, the soundest, and the best.’’—Chicago Inter-Ocean. 


THE GREAT ICE AGE, and its Relations to the Antiquity of 
Man. By James Geixkiz, F.R.S.E. With Maps, Charts, and numerous IIlus- 
trations. x vol., thick r2mo. Price, $2.50. . 


«“*The Great Ice Age’ is a work of extraordinary interest and value. The subject is peculiarly 
attractive in the immensity of its scope, and exercises a fascination over the imagination so absorbing that 
it can scarcely find expression in words. It has all the charms of wonder-tales, and excites scientific and 
unscientific minds alike.’’—Boston Gazette. 

“Every step in the process is traced with admirable perspicuity and fullness by Mr. Geikie.””—Zon- 
don Saturday Review, 

“¢ The Great Ice Age,’ by James Geikie, is a book that unites the popular and abstruse elements of 
scientific research to a remarkable degree. The author recounts a story that is more romantic than nine 
a - of ten, and we have read the book from first to last with unflagging interest.”’— Boston Commer~ 
cial Bulletin. 


ADDRESS DELIVERED, BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIA- 
TION, assembled at Belfast. By Joun TYNDALL, F, R.S., President. Re- 
vised, with additions, by’the author, since the delivery. x12mo. 120 pages. 
Paper. Price, 50 cents. . 


This edition of this now famous address is the only one authorized by the author, and contains addi- 
tions and corrections not in the newspaper reports. 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. Designed to represent the Existing State 
of Physiological Science as applied to the Functions of the Human Body. By 
Austin Fun, Jr., M.D. Complete in Five Volumes, octavo, of about 500 
pages each, with 1o5 Illustrations. Cloth, $22.00; sheep, $27.00. Each vol- 


ume sold separately. Price, cloth, $4.50; sheep, $5.50. The fifth and last 
volume has just been issued. 


The above is by far the most complete work on human physiology in the English language. It treats 
of the functions of the human body tons a practical point of view, and is enriched by many original ex- 
periments and observations by the author. Considerable space is given to physiological anatomy, par- 
ticularly the structure of glandular organs, the digestive system, nervous system, blood-vessels, organs of 
special sense, and organs of generation. It not only considers the various functions of the body, from an 
experimental stand-point, but is peculiarly rich in citations of the literature of physiology. Itis therefore 
invaluable as a work of reference for those who wish to study the subject of physiology exhaustively. As 
a complete treatise on a subject of such interest, it should be in the brarive of literary and scientific men, 
as well as in the hands of practitioners and students of medicine. Illustrations are introduced wherever 
they are necessary for the elucidation of the text. 


D. APPLETON & CO., PusLisueErs, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 


“A rich list of fruitful topics.” 


BOSTON COMMONWEALTH. 


HEALTH AND EDUCATION, 


By the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY, F. L. S., F. G. S., 
| CANON OF WESTMINSTER. 


T2021 Clothi we + eee tices Diary. 


‘It is most refreshing to meet an earnest soul, and such, preéminently, is Charles 
Kingsley, and he has shown himself such in every thing he has written, from ‘ Alton 


Locke’ and ‘ Village Sermons,’ a quarter of a century since, to the present volume, which 
is no exception. Here are fifteen Essays and Lectures, excellent and interesting in 
different degrees, but all exhibiting the author’s peculiar characteristics of thought 
and style, and some of them blending most valuable instruction with entertainment, 
as few living writers can.” —Hartford Post. 


‘‘That the title of this book is not expressive of its actual contents, is made mani- 


fest by a mere glance at its pages; itis, in fact, a collection of Essays and Lectures, 
written and delivered upon various occasions by its distinguished author; as such it 
cannot be otherwise than readable, and -no intelligent mind needs to be assured that 
Charles Kingsley is fascinating, whether he treats of Gothic Architecture, Natural 
History, or the Education of Women. The lecture on Thrift, which was intended for 


the women of England, may be read with profit and pleasure by the women of 
everywhere.” —St. Louis Dentocrat. 


every one can understand.’’—Soston Fournal. 
of the day.” —Detroit Post. 
Flerald. 


production of Mr. Kingsley commends itself to readers. The topics treated are 
mostly practical, but the manner is always the manner of a master in composition. 
Whether discussing the abstract science of health, the subject of ventilation, the 
education of the different classes that form English society, natural history, geology, 
heroic aspiration, superstitious fears, or personal communication with Nature, we 
find the same freshness of treatment, and the same eloquence and affluence of language 
that distinguish the productions in other fields of this gifted author.” —Boston Gazette. 


‘‘ The book contains exactly what every one needs to know, and ina form which 
‘* This volume no doubt contains his best thoughts on all the most important topics 
‘Nothing could be better or more entertaining for the family library.”,—Zion’s 


‘‘For the style alone, and for the vivid pictures frequently presented, this latest 


D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 
549 & 551 Broapway, N. Y. 


PRINGHAEES 


MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY, 


WITH 


Their Applications to the Training and Discipline of the Mind, and 
the Study of its Morbid Conditions. ; 


By WiiLiAM CARPENTER MD... D, 
I vol., 12mo. 737 pages. Price, $3.00. 


‘Dr. Carpenter has won his reputation as a physiologist, largely 
from the clearness of his expositions, and the present work shows that 
his capacity in this respect is still vigorous. Its most scientific parts 
are attractive reading, and the extensive array of personal instances 
and incidents, which illustrate his positions, gives great fascination to 
the volume. 

‘Tt is a hard book to lay down when once entered upon, and Dr. 
Carpenter may be congratulated upon having contributed so fresh a 
book upon such an important subject.” —Popular Science Monthly. 


‘*Is a profound and learned work, which goes to the very bottom of 
the problems of Life and Eternity.” —Doston Commonwealth. 


‘The work is probably the ablest exposition of the subject which 
has been given to the world, and goes far to establish a new system of 
mental philosophy upon a much broader and more substantial basis 


than it has heretofore stood.”—S# Louis Democrat. 


‘* The work is a revision and expansion of the author’s well-known 
work bearing the same name, published over twenty years ago, and 
so popular as to reach half a dozen editions.””— Cincinnati Gazette. 


D. APPLETON & C0., Publishers, 
549 & 551 Broapway, N. Y. 


A New Magazine for Students and Cultivated Readers. 


cL AGEs 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


CONDUCTED BY 
Professor E. L. YOUMANS. 


THE growing importance of scientific knowledge to all classes of the 
community calls for more efficient means of diffusing it. THE POPULAR 
SCIENCE MONTHLY has been started to promote this object, and supplies a 
want met by no other periodical in the United States. 

It contains instructive and attractive articles, and abstracts of articles, 
original, selected, and illustrated, from the leading scientific men of differ- 
ent countries, giving the latest interpretations of natural phenomena, ex- 
plaining the applications of science to the practical arts, and to the opera- 
tions of domestic life. 

It is designed to give especial prominence to those branches of science 
which help to a better understanding of the nature of man; to present the 
claims of scientific education; and the bearings of science upon questions 
of society and government. How the various subjects of current opinion 
are affected by the advance of scientific inquiry will also be considered. 

In its literary character, this periodical aims to be popular, without be- 
ing superficial, and appeals to the intelligent reading-classes of the commu- 
nity. It seeks to procure authentic statements from men who know their 
subjects, and who will address the non-scientific public for purposes of ex 
position and explanation. 

It will have contributions from HERBERT SPENCER, Professor HUXLEY, 
Professor TYNDALL, Mr. DARWIN, and other writers identified with specu- 
lative thought and scientific investigation. 

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY is published in a large 
octavo, handsomely printed on clear type. Terms, Five Dollars per annum, 
or fifty Cents per copy. 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 


‘* Just the publication needed at the present day.” —Montreal Gazette. . 

** Tt is, beyond comparison, the best attempt at journalism of the kind ever made in thig 
country.”—Home Fournal. 

‘¢ The initial number is admirably constituted.” —Zvening Mail. 

‘In our opinion, the right idea has been happily hit in the plan of this new monthly.” 
Buffalo Courter. > 

A journal which promises to be of eminent value to the cause of popular education in 
this country.”—V. FY. Tribune. 


IMPORTANT TO CLUBS. 


Tue Poputar ScrENcE MonruLy will be supplied at reduced rates with any periodi- 
cal published in this country. or : 
Any person remitting Twenty Dollars for four yearly subscriptions will receive an exe. 
tra copy gratis, or five yearly subscriptions for $20. 
Tue PopuLar Science MontuHLY and AppLETons’ JOURNAL (weekly), per annum, $8.00 
(or? Payment, in all cases, neust be in advance. i 
Remittances should be made by postal money-order or check to the Publishers, 


D, APPLETON & C0., 549 & 551 Broadway, New York. 


Date Due 


> 
2k S 7 
e ee % 
zs a 
q = 
a i. oa 2 A 


L 


ni Tr 
i H | | 


P105 .W62 
The life and growth of language : an 


Princeton Theological Semi ibrary 


HAM 


1 1012 00143 0984 


t 
H 
‘ as 
i 7 I 
i i . 
a * ‘ 
t Le) , 
t 
} i) 
: 2 Li) f 4 
i g 
| i cae 
g 
: 
‘ 
hal 
{ 


